Alright. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Digital session this evening.
Thank you for joining us. I'm just going to start with our land acknowledgement.
So the Canadian Publishers' Council operates within the city of Toronto, on the traditional territory
of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.
We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13, signed with the of Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.
We acknowledge that our speakers and attendees come from a wide range of territories and, and lands across Turtle Island. To learn more about the traditional Indigenous plans you are on, you can visit Whose Land or Native Land.
For our webinar this evenin,. I just wanna thank all of our attendees for taking the time to join us. As a reminder,
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A transcript of this webinar will also be available in the days
following the conclusion of the session.
Okay, so I'm going to start with some brief introductions.
I should let you know that the 3 of us are all from the higher education
sphere. So just keep that in mind as we're answering our questions this
evening. But I'm going to start with just a brief introduction of myself, and I'll pass it along to Hannah and Riley.
So my name is Rachel Coffey. I work at John Wiley and Sons Publishing. I've had many positions over the years and I'll get into that in a little bit.
But currently, I'm the Regional Manager of Success, and I will pass it along to Hannah to introduce herself.
Yeah. Thanks, Rachel. Hi, everyone. My name is Hannah Edson.
I am a Customer Success Manager at Wiley.
I graduated from Queens University with an English degree, and then, following that, I graduated from Centennial College's publishing program. I've worked at Wiley for about 3 and a half years now and I've worn a few hats since. I've worked as a
sales support role. And I've also worked as a manager for the success team.
Currently as I mentioned, I'm a Customer Success Manager.
So that means I work with college and university instructors across the country who implement Wiley digital products in their courses, those being WileyPLUS and Knewton Alta. Day-to-day,
I'm meeting with instructors to set them up and train them on our platforms.
I answer emails from our users, have questions about platform functionality.
And I collaborate with other CSMs and members of the sales team to drive business.
Thanks, Hannah. Riley?
Oh! So similar to to Hannah and Rachel,
I'm also at Wiley as a Customer Success Manager as well.
So Hannah and I work on the same team together, and very, very similar role just with different territories and different faculty and instructors that we support. On the side though, I also work as a part-time freelance book designer.
So I work with clients, usually authors who are self-publishing their works as well as small publishers, to design their books both in print and electronic formats.
Day-to-day, it's usually a bit of a mixed bag, because they are different projects and different, different people who I'm working with depending on the projects.
As well, I usually work directly with either lead editor, or project manager, or with the author themselves,
if they're self publishing.
Thank you. I let Hannah and Riley go first because
I could kind of talk about what I do as a whole.
But I work with the team, but I also work closely with sales.
So I connect with our sales reps across the country to help them sell to their customers.
So our customers are traditionally college and university,
both profit and nonprofit, where we are selling to the faculty to give them solutions for their courses.
So we primarily are selling courseware, and we'll get into the relationship between print and digital in a little bit.
But that's kind of what my job is. So I not only manage the Customer Success team to help with implementation, but I also work with the reps to really find a good solution for those faculty and to get our course right into the classroom.
So our next topic that we're gonna go to is, how did you obtain your first publishing job, and why did you decide to seek a career in publishing?
So I will start, and then I'll pass it along.
So I, I've been at Wiley my whole publishing career.
So I've been here for 15 years, and I went through Centennial as well, just like Riley and Hannah. And I did my internship at Wiley, and they were so grateful to have me, and then they had a position open up.
So I was lucky enough to sign on way back then, and I've had many different positions throughout the years from sales to editorial,
a little bit of marketing in there, and custom publishing as well, and now, back in the digital side. And I chose publishing, I guess, because I, I didn't know about educational publishing at the time.
But I just knew that I wanted to work with books and I was interested in that aspect.
And then working at education I think, kind of opened my mind to what more there was out there, and how you know, you could say sales to someone and that's a very different thing when you're talking about educational sales.
So I think it's been really interesting and challenging and I've always had an interest in being in the academic sphere and this way is kind of the best of both worlds.
So, Hannah, do you wanna go first?
Yeah, absolutely. As a fellow book lover, I've always been interested in working in publishing.
It was something I wanted to pursue after high school. I was,
I've always been open to any facet of publishing, but I hadn't really considered educational publishing, same story as Rachel, until Centennial.
Someone from Wiley actually came in from the sales team and spoke to the class about what educational publishing entails.
And so that was kind of always front of mind for me
moving throughout the program. I interned at an indie trade publisher called Second Story Press, which was a really great experience.
I worked in sales and marketing there as well. And then, when that internship ended, I was just fortunate enough to, to apply for an opening at Wiley, and be able to pursue that career that I had become interested in.
Reilly?
Yeah. So I think, jumping into to publishing, of course, as a book lover, I, like most people, wanted to either be a writer or an editor, and while I was at university at the University of Toronto, a friend of mine saw an open call on Instagram with a small indie press that was just
starting up and looking to build their editorial board. So she tagged me in that post.
I applied, and from there I joined the New Soapbox Press as one of their editors.
Really working with the small press while I was completing my undergrad, I enjoyed the work.
I really loved working with the authors and with the team. And it may be want to pursue a full time career in publishing.
So from there, I started to explore some technical programs and postsecondary education that could support that. Found Centennial College, attended the program,
and that led me to finding my current role at Wiley.
Awesome. Thank you. And the next topic is what experiences before this position,
were you still building your current career, or, you know, being successful in your current role? For me,
if I'm speaking from the management side of things, I think I've always been interested in learning as much as possible. I like to know little pieces of everything and kind of how the whole picture works together. And so my career at Wiley,
I would say my career in publishing but it's the same thing, has kind of allowed me to do that, because I've been everywhere from, you know, in editorial,
I got to be a developmental editor on one of our textbooks, and that's still like my claim to fame, like it's only like the study guide of one of our financial accounting textbooks.
But I love it, and seeing your name, on like that, like copyright page, is the coolest thing. But I got to do things like that to custom publishing, which means taking like bits and pieces of different books and putting it together and really seeing how that could solve a problem,
I think, really helped. And then working in sales. Sales was the biggest hurdle for me,
I guess, I never really wanted to be in what I thought sales was, but then, once they start talking to people, it wasn't, you know, selling something I didn't care about.
Instead it was finding a solution. So once people kind of explained what they needed,
it was trying to find that solution, and I think bringing all of those different aspects together really helped me to be a better
CSM when I was in that role, and then overall being a manager, I mean, it's just working with other people and kind of solving larger problems together
and doing that kind of pattern recognition and problem solving.
So, yeah, what about you guys? Riley? Let's start with you this time.
So I think definitely my roles in customer service helped just learning how to communicate, not only with my direct team, but also members of the general public, and especially going into a sales role.
People who, from my customers, and who I'm supporting. So regardless of what industry you may currently be in, never discount or discredit customer service, retail, or service industry roles. The soft skills that you develop in those positions are absolutely necessary regardless of what position in publishing
you you go into, or may have an interest in pursuing.
I will also totally agree with what Riley just said.
That's been totally essential in, I think, the success that we've had in this role. For me when I first started at Wiley, I didn't start as a CSM.
I started as an educational support specialist, which meant that I helped members of the sales team with tasks like checking bookstore back orders and replenishing stocks of codes for students who are purchasing the digital courseware online, and creating custom imprint
e-textbooks. And this role really helped me understand how many moving pieces there are for a postsecondary course to use our products.
And there are so many people involved and so many roles involved.
I was also in touch with, we were working in an office at the time, so the CSM team was, you know, a cubicle away,
and so in talking to them, I better understood their role. And that's what sparked the interest for that role.
So obviously, I had a little bit of knowledge going into that role. But it was really great to see how excited they were about their role in, in making a difference in instructors' and teachers' and students' academic careers.
And I think that's kind of what we've all done right, like we all work so closely together.
It's really given us just day-to-day and makes us better at our job, because we're working so closely with each other to really understand how each team member kind of works together, even if they're not in the CSM team and what their needs are and how those pieces come together.
Yeah. Totally.
So I wanted to kind of talk about how traditional print publishing works alongside digital.
Now, when we decide we're gonna do the digital session, I should say, like our digital side is the courseware.
So we don't develop the courseware. But we're the ones who are implementing it.
Our whole job is customer service and teaching people how to use our courseware, but that being said, traditional publishing is still here.
We still have print text. Our team isn't as closely linked to it, but from our perspective,
so what happens is the faculty or the customer have to choose what they're going to use.
So whether it's just our courseware or courseware plus a textbook,
and that's where the traditional print publishing kind of still comes in.
And so for us, I mean, we still get those questions that are usually redirected back to the sales rep.
But I just kind of want to address that, so that the audience knew how we worked with the print kind of textbook.
But in our courseware, we typically we have our textbook embedded inside the courseware and we still see those print texts out there.
But our focus is on the actual courseware. So on that note, we should talk about what basic technical skills and soft skills are kind of needed for what we do.
So let's start with Riley. So what key skills do you think are necessary for this role?
Technical and soft skills.
So speaking to both the CSM role with Wiley and with the freelance work, being able to adapt and really work on the fly, problem solve as things come up, but also communicate effectively.
So either working with clients, yet managing expectations and requests in its design capacity, or how we're best supporting customers
at Wiley, and how they're implementing our coursework to find those solutions.
If concerns or surprise, finding the best solution to it, while also just supporting everyone.
Speaking a bit more to the design role itself, being comfortable and confident in the software that you're using, which can apply to any digital role.
So really knowing how the platform works. If things come up, being able to troubleshoot it, being confident in your ability to troubleshoot is half of the challenge, and also just relying on communication, to find that support if, if there's anything that's either not implemented
correctly that can be developed further, because with the digital, everything is always changing and growing.
So really problem solving to find those key solutions.
So yeah, we work a lot in the Microsoft Suite.
So if you do know Excel and Word and PowerPoint, that's definitely something that we incorporate day-to-day. In terms of like the platforms
And, you know, what the company uses in terms of sites, and also just any other platforms other than the WileyPLUS and Knewton Alta,
that's all something that we train new hires on.
So you certainly don't need to come into this role, knowing everything about our courseware.
The 2 main soft skills. I would say that are the most important
are communication and problem solving, as Riley mentioned. And I think they often go hand in hand.
We come across different user experiences and use cases for our platforms all the time.
And it's up to us to make sure that we have a solution. If there's not one that's readily available to our users, if we haven't come across an instance that our users are coming across, I'm often relaying any questions I have to my team members, Riley
and Rachel, in case they've encountered something similar, and can help share their experiences.
We also work quite closely with other teams in the company, such as product developers, editorial, marketing, sales, so many teams.
And to make sure that the platforms are running as best as they can, and in turn that means that I relay any updates or enhancements to our users, so that they get the full benefit of the platform.
I think curiosity is also really important. Sometimes you can just click around and find really cool things or find your own use cases for the platform.
So I think those are the most necessary soft skills.
Yeah, I think those are both really good answers. And I was going to kind of talk about how I, like,
look for those exact things when I'm hiring someone as well.
But one of the other things I look for, in addition to like, communication is key.
You have to be able to communicate clearly. You have to have a sense of details.
I think that having, like, you know, a good personality in terms of, she has to be able to sell a little bit.
But it's really the detail orientation that I'm always looking for, because it is something that like you, said Hannah,
if you can get in and play around with something. So just having that curiosity, if you can learn by doing, I think that takes you a long way, because then, when you're talking to customers, you're able to say, well, actually, here's the guide, but this is what I find actually works the best and
so you're also personalizing the experience for them. But it's like that old adage like, you can teach it
then you know it. And so I really like that, and something I was thinking about is, we have a fairly new hire who was not from your traditional, you know, coming from a publishing program
background. So he's a teacher. And he had been supply teaching in TDSB
for quite a while, and so what he said that he's really liked what he found challenging in a good way is being able to adapt. And adaptability is something that I think you have to kind of build on.
It's not like you can just say, Oh, yeah, I'm really adaptable.
You don't really know until you're in it.
But he said that he really likes that part of the job, to be able to adapt to, you know, day-to-day, because we don't have a set schedule. So you don't come in with like your lesson plan and know what you're doing every single hour of the day. It
really depends on what your customers' needs are and what you're going to,
what you find in your inbox that morning, so I think adaptability is also really key.
Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, I also, not as a manager, but just from a sales perspective,
I think that being able to present yourself is really important.
So how you would come across if you can, you don't have to be an expert on everything you just have to be an expert on the things that you're showing, and we do give you that training. So like Hannah said, we train you on our coursewares and everything and
we do, we really like doing group training so we'll kind of put you with the other CSMs and you'll demo back and forth.
And just to get an idea of how they present, how they do their training.
So we really do support you along those ways. I think those are probably is a good summary of the best skills that we look for.
It is a lot of soft skills. It's not as many technical skills as you would expect, considering our jobs are so technical.
But it is a lot that you learn as you get used to the different coursewares.
So, Riley! Let's talk about any barriers that you experienced when you were entering into the publishing industry.
So for me, one of the barriers that I had, and like
I said it was 15 years ago, but, and I was looking at it through the trade lens where I wanted to work in a trade publishing house.
But at the time I kind of felt like in Canada,
you work in B.C. or you work in Toronto, and that was it. It didn't really seem like there was much out there and I don't think that's the case anymore at all.
And we can kind of talk about how that changed. And I'm curious to what barriers you found when you were kind of coming into the industry.
Yeah, so one of the, going to, to Centennial, one of the great things about the program is that it does end with an internship.
So as soon as we're done our in-person, scheduled classes, we're all launched into an internship where we get that practical experience.
Fortunately for me, I did have an internship.
Unfortunately for me, I had started in March 2020, right when a global pandemic started.
So we weren't. We weren't disrupted in class.
But when entering our internships, and really our first real exposure to the workforce in the publishing industry after school, a lot of our internships were canceled, postponed, or just fundamentally different from what what we expected them to be. For me, again I had an internship.
It did proceed as planned, which I was very grateful for, but it was all remote, and it was one of the first times
really the industry shifted to remote work. So we were all learning how to work from home, and in a time when I was hoping for, for mentorship in a role, I instead felt a little more
isolated. So really working on how to build connections with my teammates, grow in the industry, learn from others, while you know, working from home in a, in a remote location was definitely a challenge.
But with Wiley it's been a great experience I've learned how to navigate that remote isolation and really build collaborative relationships with my colleagues and with with the sales reps, whose territories I support as well as my
customers themselves, but definitely a weird experience to enter an industry when I've never actually worked in an office setting before with my colleagues. And some colleagues, I still have never met in person.
Yeah. And like for me, like, I moved from being in an office, kind of, to not being in an office.
So I had a similar experience, but I can't imagine just starting a brand new job and college essentially, and not knowing not being able to meet your colleagues right away.
For me the remote aspect was probably the biggest barrier that I felt like
I had. But that is kind of at the door now. There really isn't
that same, I mean, thanks to the pandemic partially, but there really isn't that barrier anymore.
I mean, we hire colleagues everywhere. It happens that the 3 of us are all local in the GTA, but that's not always the case.
We had someone our team last year who was in B.C.
And our sales team spans across the country. So everywhere from, we have a rep in
Vancouver and manager in Vancouver, someone in Edmonton, Calgary, in Winnipeg.
All the way down to the east coast and Nova Scotia. So we really do have people everywhere.
We also have people who work in our U.S. office but they're still Canadian-based.
So we really have been quite flexible with that, and I don't, I don't feel that's a barrier at all anymore.
But it's interesting how much things change over the years.
The kind of, on that note, Hannah, how are we seeing the demand for digital change in the last few years?
Yeah. So I was hired as a CSM basically at the same time as the first Covid lockdown and a lot of courses at that time needed a digital solution for students who are finishing up the semester remotely, all of a sudden, which gave me an excellent
albeit hectic opportunity to learn the platforms.
But we were supporting people who were not only transitioning from teaching, remote or, in-class to remotely, but we were also helping users who had never even seen our platform before.
So it was an extensive learning curve for everybody in a very quick turnaround time, but that gave us an excellent opportunity to foster new relationships, and it also prepared us for the next semester when we knew that the lockdown is going to go longer than those few weeks that everybody was
kind of hoping for. Now, with courses being taught in the classroom, we're still seeing want, and sometimes need, for technology, and it's often offered as a hybrid solution.
So many users now have the preference to teach and learn remotely, and we'll opt for that when they can, and we are happy to support them in doing that.
Yeah. And I think that kinda goes to a question a little bit later that I'm just gonna bring up.
But well, first of all, one of the questions you're gonna address is, why did you choose digital?
We didn't. Like digital chose us, I guess. But something else that you mentioned Hannah is like, we are still seeing like a need for digital in the classroom.
And from my perspective, like I mean time has lost all meeting in the last few years.
But I wanna say, probably 8 years ago or so our company was saying, you know what this is the year we're gonna go digital. Digital is gonna be more important than anything else.
And they changed everything and changed our sales structure to focus just on the digital courseware and e-books and it didn't happen.
And so it's kind of like we've been waiting for this kind of uprising of digital in education to happen for a long time, and it didn't really happen until the pandemic.
And so it kind of forced schools to spend those resources to develop those online courses.
And now students can access those educational resources from anywhere. So it really opened up the doors for students,
I think, too, and, like Hannah said, even having courses on, like back in the classroom now, they still have some kind of need for an online resource, because maybe there's still limitations on campus for how often you're going in or maybe it's just a matter of those skills. There's a
lot of content that you have to cover in like a 14 week semester, and we find that now that instructors have been exposed to software courseware that can help them, they're more willing to actually give it a try. And so that's how I've seen a change
recently, I guess, it's not just that, you know, everyone kind of forced to figure it out at that time, but they kind of want to continue using it.
They saw something that works. And so I think that's a pretty big win.
If they implemented everything, and then tried to pull it in from there, you know,
at least they took something from that year when they had to learn everything and kept it in their course
rotation, I guess.
So let me see, do you think there will be a need for print in the future?
I think that print isn't going anywhere yet. I guess, like I said, it was a while ago when we thought that it was just gonna go away.
But it never really did, and there are still courses that have open book exams, and there's still accreditation that I expect you to have a print text, and I can only see from the education perspective.
I think that in some individual courses it might not be as dependent, and we are seeing more e-books or courseware kind of usage rather than print.
But I don't think print it going anywhere, any time soon. Do you guys have anything to add? What do you think?
I would agree with that, and I think too, we have some courses like our, you know, anatomy and physiology or psychology, where those students are going to refer to the textbook throughout their academic and professional careers.
And I think tech, print lends itself really well to that. So I agree.
I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.
Yeah.
Thank you. Even in like culinary, too. Right? Like, you're still gonna wanna have like print text.
And, and then even from a trade perspective like, I like my e-books, and I can read them but once in a while I like
having a tangible, print text in front of me, you know.
Yeah.
So. And actually, I think our last question that we have on here, has the move to digital changed the skills that you look for when making new hire?
I mean not for me, because we had to be digital before.
It was just a matter of, you know, working in the office before. But we are still doing digital things, I think now it's more.
I think it's always a plus if someone has more digital experience in certain ways, like, if someone knows a software already, not a Wiley-owned software,
but if they know, like a school learning management system, or if they have like that, teaching experience, they can talk about what they done before, and things like that
I think, make someone more valuable when I'm looking to hire someone new.
But in terms of the technical skills, that part hasn't changed.
I think it's just the soft skills. And knowing how you, kind of, manage under pressure and how you communicate, and all of those kind of things.
I think that's the only thing that's kind of changed, but more just enhanced importance,
I guess, from what we've been looking for. So I can see we have quite a few
questions, in the Q&A, and a couple of questions are coming through the chat.
If you don't mind throwing them in the Q&A, it just makes it easier for us to answer.
The first question I see is, I'm planning on studying English and I'm writing my first book at the moment, in hopes of publishing it soon.
Would you recommend self-publishing, or going through the process of with an editor and such? Can you explain the process of going through self-publishing and the formal process of a publishing company?
So we can't necessarily speak about self-publishing because
that wouldn't be what we do. In terms of, I kinda wanna answer this in 2 ways,
so if you're interested in going into publishing like Riley mentioned earlier, there are always people who are interested in writing. And I feel like we had that in our, in our programs at Centennial, or whatever as well, there are always people who are interested in writing, but also wanted to be in publishing so you could do
both. There's no stopping you from, you know, being a writer and getting a job in publishing, and the second part of the question in terms of going through a publisher. Generally,
they need you to have a proposal and a manuscript, and then you submit it, and then it'll get reviewed.
And if someone has interest then they'll reach out to you.
Hmm! Is there anything to add to that?
I'd say a part of the main difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing,
having worked with authors who are self-publishing is, you are essentially your own project manager.
So if you are going through the self-publishing route, you have a lot more control over your final product.
But you do need to have a good understanding of the industries, just how to, how to get your own ISBN and different distribution channels.
So if you're willing to put in that sort of planning stage to see your manuscript into that final product, definitely, self publishing is a great avenue to pursue or look into further.
Whereas traditional publishing you are working with others. You're working with the traditional press, and there is that application process
of submitting your proposal, as Rachel said, and, and working directly with editors, project managers, and and marketing teams depending on the the publisher that may accept your manuscript.
Thanks, Reilly. That is a much better answer than I gave.
Okay? The next question: I'm currently an English student in Vancouver with very limited publishing courses available, and only a handful of local publishing companies to intern at. Is moving to Toronto to get a publishing credential slash
internship worth it in your opinion? So you don't have to.
I mean, it depends on the company, but my understanding is that a lot of companies are open to remote work or made fully remote.
So for Wiley, for example, we had an office in 2020. And then, at the end of 2020, we ended up closing it because we weren't using it that often. It was really our team that was using it
out of all of Wiley, Canada. And so we ended up closing our office, and just going 100% remote.
And so, that being said, we hire interns from everywhere. And I can't speak for the other publishers, but I assume that they would be in the same boat, and I mean, if you are doing, if you decide to go the publishing course route, they usually have the internship requirements, so I think most
publishers will be open to that, regardless of where your location is and you don't have to have the publishing program to get into publishing.
It just happens that a lot of us are based in, you know the GTA, have that background because the program is right here.
It just made it easier. But you certainly don't have to.
We have many people in Wiley that did not take the publishing program.
They just express their interest and applied online when a position was available.
Yeah, I would just keep an open mind and see what positions are out there.
I don't think that you need to uproot your life and move to Toronto necessarily, just to get into publishing.
I. This is a good question. I will pass it to you, Hannah
Hmm!
to answer. The question is, could you talk about what you actually do during the day in digital publishing?
So your day-to-day duty.
Yeah, absolutely. So our kind of busy season is anytime a semester starts and also leading up to the start of the semester, so often times we're reaching out to our existing users to make sure that they're set up for the new term.
And we're also reaching out to any new users, any new instructors for training,
you know any last minute Q&As before their courses go live.
We're also reaching out throughout the semester to make sure everything's going well.
A lot of our job is reactive. We're keeping an eye on our emails pretty closely to make sure that, that anything that comes up we're dealing with in a timely manner.
We also all have sales reps that we work very closely with to help them succeed in selling the product and maintaining the relationships that we've already established with our current users.
Riley, am I missing anything? Is there anything? That's mostly the day-to-day?
Yeah, describing it as reactive, I think, is the best, the best way to really summarize it.
We can be as proactive as we can, such as your point, Hannah, planning for the term, reaching out in advance verbally as any questions, concerns, issues arise. We do our best to address them as they come on.
Yeah, and I think a big part of that is like understanding your customers,
your specific customers. So you can prioritize and manage your time to be able to do that.
And those are probably some key skills that you would wanna at least develop if you decide to join a position like this because you do need to,
you know, sometimes things get a little out of hand if you're reactive, and it's exam season, you never know what's gonna hit
you. But for sure I agree with your response.
So this is, this is a pretty easy question so
I'm gonna take this. How is digital publishing different from regular publishing?
It's really not to be honest. The difference is in terms of what goes into like the physical manufacturing of a book.
That's different, because there's a cost analysis that has to go into everything that happens.
So whether you're looking at an e-book to a textbook, there's not really any difference there.
It's just the textbook is gonna take longer and it has to go to the printers. So then you're looking at resource management in terms of, you know,
is there a paper shortage? So last year there was a paper shortage.
The printers were a little bit slower, so the textbook printed a little bit slower versus e-books to go out right away.
They can get error updates happen right away. So if there's a mistake in the text, it can get updated and pushed out. In terms
of courseware, though I do look at that a little bit different, because what I've seen is a huge shift from the traditional text versus courseware. And so when I say text, I mean print text or e-book versus courseware. Most of our resources,
so meaning our people resources, our money resources, go into the courseware because that's our primary product now.
And so in terms of the difference, it's just what goes into it.
But the actual content itself, the text content is the same.
So, does somebody really and absolutely need to go through a Centennial or similar work in digital publishing program?
If so, why?
Hey, guys, I don't think so at all. But Hannah and Riley, do you think that's changed like? Did you feel like you had to go through it to get into publishing at the time? And that's changed now?
I felt like I wanted to pursue the publishing program, and I wanted to give myself as many opportunities to learn all of the facets of publishing.
So if I would say, pursuing a program in publishing is really beneficial if you're not entirely set on a certain facet, it just opens a lot of opportunities and gives you opportunities to meet different people and make connections. But like, as Rachel mentioned, we just
hired someone on our team that did not go through Centennial, and he's fantastic.
So it was by no means a barrier for him to get a role, and it wouldn't be a barrier for anybody else to get on this team,
I wouldn't say.
Yeah. And I think that's a really good way of answering it, too, because I think the same,
that's like what all of us said, like, we didn't really know that much about educational publishing coming in.
And so without the program, I wouldn't have understood all the different areas of publishing,
let alone the difference between like magazine, books, and educational publishing, right?
So it just kind of expanded what was out there for me, so that I didn't know where the opportunities were.
But no, I certainly don't think it's a barrier to have to do that. I think, just do your research,
learn as much as you can before jumping in and reach out to people. Like reach out to people on LinkedIn.
If you see that they have a position, you have no idea what it means, job
titles change all the time, if you really don't know what it is, just reach out and ask what they do.
I think that many people would be happy to talk to you about the position of their company.
Just learn more about that company or that industry, and see what you wanna do.
So. What does the job market look like in the publishing world right now?
Is it easy to break into the market if you have previous digital content, writing, technical writing, experience in other fields?
I think it depends on the position that you're going for, but in terms of technical writing and digital content writing, I mean, there's always freelance positions.
So we hire, not my team, but like editorial, production, they hire consultants all the time to do, you know, checking, or maybe they do like hiring for resources,
that kind of thing. So it really just depends on the department that you're interested in looking into.
But there are still positions available for sure. It's publishing,
so I mean, things change all the time but it's more of a shift in terms of what's available.
So it's not, it's not that there aren't positions,
just that they've changed in terms of their requirements now.
So even our sales reps. I think they've been called sales representatives, account managers, now they're called digital learning executives.
It's all still the same position, it's just kind of shifted like what their roles and responsibilities are.
I think any experience that you have regardless of what it is, as long as you can apply it to the position you're applying to,
I think that's what really makes the difference.
I don't know if we're gonna have time to answer all the questions, but I will keep plowing through.
What tools, resources do you have, maybe books or websites, if someone wanted to join the publishing world and wants to learn skills needed and general information about the industry? I think that in the chat there are a few links in there, including the link to the Centennial program, not that you have to go to
Centennial, but it kind of outlines the different courses that are in there, and I think that our, not the chat open,
but I think that our LinkedIn profiles are probably in there as well, and you are welcome to reach out if you have any specific questions about the company.
But even if it's just to learn more about publishing, I recommend you go to the CPC website.
They do have links to all the publisher sites, they have links to the career sites, just to learn a little bit more.
So, yeah.
Hmm, I'm currently working in software sales. And I've always been interested in writing and editing.
Would you consider someone with sales experience in a different industry for a role in publishing if they're looking to transition?
I think sales experience is the most transferable skill
that you could get to, to be honest. So I think that sales works amazing. As long as you know your job well enough, and you've done enough research on the position that you're applying to to be able to make those connections, I think that that's the most important thing. I mean, when I've been doing
interviews, I always ask for experiences like how, and my questions are based on things that I know
about the position, and how it would be important. So as long as you can respond, based on that, then I think that's fine.
Yeah, sales is a very transferable skill. So I encourage you to apply to any kind of sales positions that are in,
in a company. You can move into kind of editorial positions as well.
But those be a little bit different. Those don't necessarily require the sales experience. But once you get your feet in the door at a company, it is a lot easier to kind of move around once you're inside.
Before you talked about barriers you faced when entering the publishing industry. Do you think the shift between print and digital has created a bigger barrier for those applying or entering publishing in terms of needing specific
Knowledge and technology and/or experience?
Hmm!
So I, I'm gonna say no for this one.
There's still a lot of different opportunities in publishing, with different departments, different publishers focusing on different products and different streams.
We, coming from the digital side, obviously are a little more leaning towards software skills.
Being well-versed in different platforms and learning the digital side.
But in terms of entering publishing. I don't see the technical requirements necessarily as a barrier, and if there are technical requirements, a lot of the different teams do have training on that software. So like Hannah mentioned for our position, we do have a
training where we go through the process of learning the platform and, and it's very much supported within that team environment, depending, of course, on if, if that possible job requires software experience or software application.
I'll take the next one. Why the need for a separate digital department of the publishing company?
Why don't they just take the text and transfer it to digital?
Totally right. There isn't a difference, and there isn't a separate digital publishing department. Our area
is a little bit different. So ours is just implementation of that,
so it's digital implementation of the course where that exists. We still have imprints or departments within Wiley that are print only, but it's because they're different
disciplines. So, for example, if you look at one of our imprints, Blackwell, so they do a lot of the English titles like, like English lit titles. So if you look at those, those don't have an online courseware part to them.
So they just continue on their publishing side, and they do convert their books to e-books.
But no, you're totally not missing anything. There is no difference in terms of the actual publishing of the text to digital text.
And 2 more quick questions, what is your perspective on the process for traditional, conventional academia texts
eventually becoming mitigated? What then for scholarly-centric publishing houses like
Wiley?
I don't know if you mean like becoming like, like math online, courseware kind of school.
If so, those have always existed. Or even if it's a matter of you know, the online, online schools, like Athabasca, for example, that have, like, self-paced courses that you can take throughout the year. That hasn't changed anything for Wiley, in fact, we still have programs that will
help you develop that kind of course syllabus or whatever. Or provide you with the backing through the courseware to have that kind of self-paced module for students to work through.
But we still see those come up, and those have been coming up for years, and I saw a question in the chat about AI as well and it's similar things, so the those challenges have always been there.
They're just becoming more prominent. I don't think that it's going to be anything drastic for publishing houses, because we're still providing content.
And we know that we are providing quality content to help those courses go through.
Yeah, and then digital departments tend to grow by leaps and bounds.
I mean, like Hannah said, when we went through the pandemic in 2020,
it was the busiest our team's ever been.
We actually had just a team of 4 Customer Success Managers at the time, and we grew by 2 people
after that year because it was just crazy. So I think that need's going to continue to grow as more people integrate digital.
That's it for our questions. Thank you, everyone. Sorry for going a few minutes over into the next session, but I appreciate all of your questions and engagement, and thank you, Hannah and Riley, for participating.
Thank you.
Welcome everybody to the Sales session. I'm gonna start us off by doing a quick land acknowledgement, and then we'll jump into introductions.
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and Métis people. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. We acknowledge that our speakers and attendees come from a wide
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following the conclusion of the session.
So I'll start with introducing myself. Then I'll pass it over to Matt, then Phil, then Ahmed, to introduce themselves as well.
So I'm your moderator for tonight. My name is Kyle Fisher.
I'm the Director of Sales for, and Success, for Wiley Canada.
So I run the Sales and Success organization for Wiley.
I've been doing, been working at Wiley for 23, almost 23 years.
I started out as a sales rep, and then I moved into a Western Sales Manager, and then it became the director of Sales for Canada, and I moved to also covering
half of the U.S. and Canada which was a lot of travel, and then, now I'm back to Director of Sales and Success for Canada.
So I also run the Customer Success team and the Sales team in Canada. Over to you, Matt.
Oh, Matt, you're on mute!
It always happens once a meeting.
Yes, there we go. Hi, thanks, Kyle. Hello, everyone!
Thanks for coming. I'm Matt Adamson.
I'm a national account manager for Wiley, based in Toronto.
I've been at Wiley for about 8 years, and what I do is I sell Wiley books to independent bookstores, wholesalers which are mostly public library wholesalers, some specialty accounts, and I do that for most of the country. We have a sales rep and
her team in B.C. and Alberta, that I work with, and then as well, Wiley has independent sales reps calling on bookstores and regional wholesalers and distributors throughout the U.S.
There's about 25 of them in 4 different rep groups, and I work with them,
supplying catalogues and things like that. Before that I was Director of the Reference and Trade Division at Oxford Canada, and before that I worked for Cambridge University Press as a National Sales Rep.
Thanks, Kyle.
Awesome. Over to you, Phil.
Hello, everyone! My name is Phil Mills. I work for Wiley Canada.
I work, I'm the Regional Sales Manager in the Education Division.
I have been at Wiley since 2009.
I did leave and come back. This is my second stint at Wiley.
I've been on sales, I started as a sales rep, and I am a,
I've been a sales manager since 2016, and I currently manage a team
that's kind of spread out all over the country.
I manage 10 people all the way from here to Halifax.
And yeah, I got my start like I said, as a sales rep.
And before that I was with Oxford for a very short time
also in their Education Division.
Thanks, Bill. Ahmed?
Hi, everyone. First of all, thanks, Kyle, and thanks for the organizers for inviting me to this webinar.
So my name is Ahmad Inchassi, and I currently work for Oxford University Press as the Internal Training. Manager.
I joined them in 2015, back in Dubai, as the Training Manager, covering the Middle East and Africa. And my job was to visit the customers pre
and post-sale to make sure their whole experience is really amazing with our products.
And then I moved to Canada recently, 6 months ago. What I work now as Internal Training Manager for the Higher Education department as well as the Academic Division, and my duty is to really make sure that in this fast-paced industry and work to cover all these skills and necessary
advancement in the industry to equip our salespeople.
Thanks.
Awesome. Thank you, Ahmad. So we'll jump right into some questions before you guys.
And the first one I'll start off with you, Matt, and then I'll move to Phil
and Ahmad to answer the second portion of the question. Because the question is, can you describe the difference between trade sales and higher education sales so that I'll let you answer the trade side of it, and then I'll move over the other guys.
Sure. Okay. One of my favorite questions. To me, trade sales
and higher ed sales, or education sales, it's, it's like shoes and socks:
you wear them on your feet, but that's about the only thing they have in common.
The trade, trade, the trade business is a whole lot of books. Wiley publishes about 2 to 300 trade books
every 4 months or so. And these books are designed for lay people to read.
They can also be at a very higher level. Wiley's very good in business and finance and education, for instance. Trade books are for everybody.
They can be sold anywhere, any book store, and to me that's trade is fiction.
Trade is nonfiction, and to me the the challenge of it is that these are all,
these are all ideas. These are all things that authors have written, that they, they want to get out to the wider world.
And that my job in sales is to help and enable that to get these ideas out into the public and then they sink or swim, based on the merit of the idea,
the quality of the cover, the price of the book, if it gets any publicity, if it's on trend or not. It's, it's an amazing dynamic.
And for me. It's, each one of these is just a piece of humanity,
really. And I've I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
The other thing that's not different from the education side, but that does make life very difficult and interesting from a business point of view, is that all this is returnable.
We can sell a book to a bookstore. The bookstore puts it on the shelf.
It doesn't sell, they send it back. It makes for a very complicated business relationship.
Okay, thanks, Matt. Now, Phil, talk about the differences you see from the higher education side.
Sure. So the higher education sales piece is really, you know, I look at it as kind of a, it's a, it's a big puzzle.
We work on a yearly sales cycle. So your, we mimic, you know, certainly the buying cycles of a, you know, university,
will, you know, during the, the fall term, we'll deal with professors looking at what they wanna use for the course materials for the January term, and we'll do the same thing again
starting in January for, you know, for the next fall.
So what, you know, it's, there's a lot of different little pieces, but the the one big thing that I think is really important and really different is, you know, when you're talking to professor about how they run their course,
there are a lot of different ways that they can teach a certain, certain, certain topic and certain concept so a lot of time, a lot of the time that we're spending selling is speaking with professors and trying to understand,
you know, what is it that they're doing? What is it they would want to do
differently if they could? What is it their students are struggling with?
How can we help, you know, their students be more successful in the classroom? And then it's, you know, crafting a solution around that puzzle, around those questions, around those those issues and trying to ensure that what we have can help the professor and satisfy the professor and the students in a way that
they haven't been able to currently in, what they're currently using.
So you know, we're in higher ed, we're experiencing a major, major influx from going from print to digital.
Those worlds are shifting very, very quickly, you know, but the content still important in terms of what we're selling, too.
So the big piece the puzzle is just trying to figure out, you know, where the, how the professor wants to teach the course, and how can we help them
really accomplish their goals in the classrooms? A lot of, it's a lot of questioning, a lot of listening, and a lot of, you know, reading between the lines sometimes and just clarifying and making sure you're understanding things.
So it's more, from what I understand, never working in trade, Matt, but it's a little bit more, you know,
relational-based in the sense of, you know, you wanna really understand how somebody is, what their motivations are behind what they're, what they're doing and trying to help them solve their problems.
Awesome! Thanks, Phil. Ahmad?
Yes. I do agree with Matt and Phil.
I would actually like to focus on an area of moving from print to digital. Now, selling to universities is one of these products that you're actually selling to a gatekeeper, which is the professor rather than the end user and the students. Once you approach the processor really, first of all, to
be sure of your content. Know your content really well, how you can sell it to the professor, and then create kind of a research journey to the professor from day one when they start the classes until the final exam of the term and show them how your digital resources can really close these gaps
talking about the activities in your course, how they can do a certain homework online, how they can get different stats and analytics
of any course, over there. So it's really about crafting a solution to your professor through,
I would say, a consultative selling approach rather than just from point A to Point B.
It should be more of a discussion.
Yeah, absolutely. I know when I started in, in sales, some people are always like, what, you're going into sales? And automatically
Right.
people think of like a car salesperson, right? And it's, we're totally different
in our line of business. It's, you're working with the customer.
And sometimes you're building relationship for years because it takes time like this isn't, like Phil said,
this is a year-long process sometimes, and it's not a quick sale where you're making big sales every month.
You're working along the cycle of the universities in higher ed and so it's a little bit different.
Exactly. It's about what the customer wants to buy
rather than what you want to sell.
Exactly. Yeah. Hi, awesome. We'll move to the next question.
And this is one that I think we'll have a lot of answers on.
What would you guys say are the biggest trends and differences you've seen in the market since you began in the market? And some of us have been doing this for quite a while, so we've seen a lot of changes. We'll start with you Ahmad, and then go over to Matt and Phil.
Well, I started in this field back in 2015, and I can clearly say that students really want to move to digital.
And at some point there will be a conflict between the professor and the digital software.
Professors would like to, they actually feel intimidated by digital,
like it's going to replace them. But it's about how you explain to them that these digital courses can really benefit them.
So, for example, we are offering some courses called a pedium, at, which are available to replace some courses like, for example, how to avoid plagiarism.
So these basic courses can be fully replaced by these digital courses.
They're graded, their mark, they can be controlled and analyzed by the professor.
So moving to digital is one big trend that I've seen. The second one, and you've, we've recently heard about like the artificial intelligence. We've recently heard about the ChatGPT and how it can replace professors in some way, or even assist students
during, during their essays or articles by just really
typing a simple question, and you get the full article by the AI.
So this is the move now, it's your digital. Print
sales are kind of decreasing, so the more you move towards digital the better it is,
of course, for everyone.
Awesome. Thanks, thanks, Ahmad. How about you, Matt?
Well, there has been major, major shifts over the last
number of years. I would say the biggest one has to be the e-book.
The other huge one was Amazon, and we can talk about that
probably separately. But really the, the over the last 10 years or so it was the e-book.
When the e-book was coming and announced, and was rolling out, many felt that that was the end of print, and that this was going to totally change the business, and everything was going to be shifting
digital. And this is in the trade side, not the education side. Basically, that didn't happen.
And as an, the real lesson coming out of the pandemic, which was a worldwide phenomenon, was that the reading public has voted with their feet and they've made it very clear that they want print. When the pandemic started,
these are U.S. figures, e-books in trade were 19% of the market.
The August of 2020, the first year of the pandemic, sales went up to 34%.
Now they're at 13%. They're less than what they were before
the pandemic started. So print is alive and well.
Fiction and nonfiction. The.
While that was happening, over the last 10 years, many publishers geared up systems-wise, talent-wise, executive-wise, aiming at digital and the reality of it is, is that print is what people want and print is also very profitable.
There is a large ecological issue with print, and that doesn't, deserves a lot of, my dog just walked in.
That deserves a lot of discussion as well. But to me that was the biggest, biggest shift that we've seen in the last 10 years or so. Over the last 20 years,
it was Amazon, when Amazon started. It changed everything. It became the dominant force in publishing, and to me, the one of the most interesting parts of that, was that publishing which is seen by many people as a sunset industry and an old school industry.
Publishing and trade publishing was at the forefront of the new economy, which was,
which was Amazon. And here we are again, still dealing with Amazon.
Millions of people buying books from Amazon. Amazon dominates our industry and trade books and trade bookstores survived Amazon.
They survived HBO. They survived Netflix. They survived the e-book and they survived the pandemic.
So it's certainly been a wild and interesting ride?
Thanks, Matt. How about you, Phil?
Yeah, I would. I would say so. When I started in the business in 2008, I, I would suggest that the learning was still, and higher ed was still in a very traditional kind of mindset, right. This is, you know, I'm gonna lecture. You're gonna get the book.
You're gonna do these end of chapter problems. And my expectations are that you've done the reading.
And then you come to class prepared, and that sort of thing.
I would say that, especially in the disciplines that we at Wiley are very heavy in on the business side of things, and then STEM disciplines, that the, the way students have learned and are consuming content is different.
The content and the quality of the content is still incredibly important.
What I would say has changed is kind of this realization, well a few things.
So the first thing, is the realization that a lot of the way students are learning now are necessarily starting with the end in mind.
Starting with the end of chapter material or the problems they're working on.
And they're gonna try and work backwards through the content and try and figure out how that material or how they can solve that problem with the material.
I would also say that there is much more of a desire to, and something that we're really trying to sink our teeth into is, how do you, in a, I don't like using the term, but gamify education? How can we get more interactive? How can we get more
simulations? How can we get more, kind of, interactive learning materials going that's, it's a, it's a, it's especially in like, saying in some of the different disciplines of, I'm with on a daily basis, that's a really big, really important,
I'm thinking that we're talking about on, on a daily basis. And so the move to digital in that sense isn't necessarily just about how, you know, the e-book, or how the content is delivered. A big part of it is, what else can we offer? What else, how can we help
you with your students? Can we give you an accounting simulation to help you walk through an accounting cycle?
You know same thing in, in marketing. Can we come up with a, you know, something else to help you, help you engage your students,
so the concepts are, are very much a, something that you learn, and you learn the real life example behind that.
And then the, the last thing that I'll say is, you know, there's also a lot of, the world is rapidly changing.
I mean, we just talked about ChatGPT. I think, I think there's a, we can definitely go down a rabbit hole about ChaptGPT, but I think that there is,
there's a lot of different things that we're seeing in the marketplace.
The one is, in terms of what's changing education. So one is, you know, big data. How, you know, grads in a lot of different disciplines now are being asked to come out of the university with some, you know, skills.
You know whether it's, you know, actual Excel skills or Power BI skills, or any of the kind of the big data software systems.
How can we help professors who maybe, they don't know how to use those systems?
How can we help them teach that sort of thing? What kind of materials and resources do we have so that they can teach their students so that when you graduate and you're, you know, 22, 23 with the marketing degree you can easily
get a job because you actually know how to manipulate data and create visualizations and things like that that people can use.
So, and you know again, this is a rapidly changing, constantly evolving part of the, part of the world.
But that's a very big difference from when I started back in '09, when everybody put, they just had Excel skills on their resume.
And it didn't necessarily mean anything other than you know how to sum up, you know, a line of data.
So that's a big change for us.
And I think it's something that we're, again,
we're trying to think our teeth into, but there's a lot of changes between,
in the last, you know, 15 years or so.
Phil, we should have had you on the data session. So that's a lot of stuff that we talked about on the data session for anybody that may have been on that session, too.
So, and I'll just add a little bit to it, because, of course, I work very closely with Phil on stuff.
So I think the biggest thing now is we're also looking at how the tools, online tools, that we can use to support students as Phil and Ahmad were talking about.
One of the things that we're designing now is adaptive technology, right?
That adapts. So the system doesn't just give everybody the same thing who has the students working through and using the program.
The program will recognize where maybe the student struggles. So it's intelligent enough, and a lot of that data analytics that Phil was talking about is in the back end of the system.
Recognizing that the student might be struggling with this, so they need to try this and work with this.
So it will give all, everybody has their own little learning path that they're doing in the system, and it adapts to what they're doing.
So there's a lot more technology than when we all first started,
right? The technology that I was selling when I first started, I think was the CD-ROM inside the cover of the book.
Now it is really advanced, and there's a lot more that goes into creating a product and a lot more time and analysis that goes into it other than just the content.
It's like, how do we help students learn? One of our big missions at Wiley in our statement that we always had was helping teachers teach and helping students learn.
And the way students are learning, I was talking to a math prof a long time ago, and it rings true to today.
They're like, math doesn't change in hundreds of years.
So why should I do anything different? Well, math hasn't changed.
But the way the students are learning has changed. So we're trying to fit our systems to how students are looking to learn now and help them do better in their courses and have better outcomes.
So this question, I'll start off with you, Phil. It's what kind of skills do you feel people need when they're starting out selling in publishing?
And then the second part would be, since I know you do
hiring is, what do you look for in a candidate?
Yeah. That's a good question. The, so, I'll preface this by saying that almost, if you look at our salesforce, which is 14 across Canada, is that right?
So 14 sales reps. I bet you you could,
you know, there's at least 10 of them that would tell you they held no interest in a sales job when they were in university, or going through the Centennial program, or anything along those lines. And a big part of it is kind of what Kyle mentioned earlier: everyone pictures
salespeople as, you know, kind of high pressure car salesmen type thing, which is really not what education sales is about.
It's, you know, I joke in my interviews with people I'm interviewing that, you know,
it's kind of sales for nerds.
Sales for introverts. Like it's not the kind of job that you need to be, you know,
feel like you need to have this outgoing personality, and you'll, you know, it's the only way you can get it done.
No. So the, what we're looking for, what I look for, is I'm looking for, you know,
certainly somebody who has a, somebody who has a work ethic who can balance a number of things on the go, because, you know, in a certain day you could end up speaking with 5 or 6 different professors all across different disciplines across campus.
And I think a big, overarching one that I think is a trait we see in all of our most successful people is the ability to be curious and just keep asking the question, why?
And I think, you know, we've had a lot of success with people who kind of have that skill, have that skill set, or maybe they don't even realize they have that skill set.
But you sit there, and you, you know,, you could just kind of keep going down a rabbit hole.
And I, and I talked earlier about, I talked earlier about. Actually, I can't remember if I did talk earlier anyway.
So you know you talk, do you, you have the ability to sit there and question and keep asking.
You know, what is it that makes you tick? What is it that you, you know, as a professor
maybe you are, you walk into someone's office or you have a Zoom call with them.
Maybe they are very, very thrilled with, with what they're doing in their course, but they don't realize what else is out there, and you can only uncover that, that really kind of hidden issue
if you sit there and have, ask questions, and you just keep following them down the path of, you know, whatever it is that they want to talk about.
And you kind of keep kind of shaping that conversation
and really understanding, you know, what someone's needs are and what their, what their, what their desires are too, and how to and how to teach a certain certain topic or content. So that's a,
that's a, that's a very big one. Certainly, you know,
we're looking for some more, you know, people who are tech savvy?
We've had a lot of people who, you know, who've done, had previous careers or previous jobs, you know,
maybe at the Apple store, or something like that. But, you know, do you have the ability to pick up on technology?
You know, that's a really important one, you know. And you know, both
Kyle and I work for somebody who used to say, you know,
can you pass the beer test, right? You, is it somebody you want to go for a beer with?
Is it somebody you just wanna be around? And we do that for a couple of reasons.
One, if I just like hanging out with you, chances of you being able to build that relationship with a professor or a department is much is, is big, but also life's too short to work
with people you don't really like. So you know, like, we like to have people around that we really enjoy working with.
That makes life, you know, a little more fun in, in that regard so that's, you know,
I think, at a kind of a higher level. That's some of the things that I look for when when I'm hiring.
You're muted, Kyle.
I did it. too. Ahmad, how about yourself?
What do you find you're looking for? I'm not sure if you do
hiring at Oxford, but.
No, I don't do hiring, but I actually train new joiners as well.
So one of the things that we focus on is really listening skills.
So while I was really talking to a professor, you need to be a good listener to try to catch that need that they want.
That's number one, listening skills, communication skills. So apart from having your ideas, your information well organized and available and presentable as well, you need to be able to communicate that with a customer, to offer them whatever they need at the spot goes usually a sales meeting is very short to the professor and you need to
really catch their attention. Besides listening and communication, I would also say, one thing is kind of transparency.
Customers, the users don't like the idea of salespeople, because they feel that they just wanna sell them anything to get a revenue.
But when they find that you're aware of all your options that you have to offer, and you really want to offer them the option that suits them the best rather than what gets you the most profit or revenue, they really trust you, and that goes of course through the whole relationship over the
years. So these 3 to me are the most important skills: listening, communication, and kind of, trust.
Awesome, thanks. And Matt?
You're welcome.
Well I remember being told pretty early that you were given 2 ears and one mouth for a reason. That you should be listening twice as much as you're talking. And for salespeople I think that is a big part of it.
As Ahmad has said, and Phil. The ability to listen, parse through information.
When I was, I'm not hiring these days, but when I was, I was looking for people who were well rounded, who were interested in a lot of different things, who could communicate, who, who showed some initiative.
They, people would call that entrepreneurial spirit or opportunistic.
I just was looking for any kind of initiative, at whatever they were doing.
They, play chess, they they were swimmers. They were just good students.
It was just like anything that you've kind of put your back and your effort into.
I'm interested in that, because that shows me that you could do it for something else.
Just generally about sales, because I know there's a lot of people listening to this
here who are looking at it from a career point of view.
Sales really hones the skills that you're going to need for the rest of your life, which is to be succinct and clear.
It also gives you a very healthy respect for deadlines which can translate into any job.
And the other thing about sales is that you're working for an employer and, and you're selling whatever the employer is making.
But you're talking to many, many, many different people. You're talking to many, many different customers, and all those customers are looking for good people to work for them, and I don't know how many times I've seen and had salespeople
who have gotten jobs, really good jobs, with their customers because their customer got to know them,
got to trust them, and realize that they had something to offer.
So it is a field that offers a wide variety of opportunity, and it is a field that that you can learn
a lot of valuable skills that will travel with you for the rest of your career and the rest of your life.
Awesome. Thanks, Matt. And I'll just add one little tid bit from my end, and then we'll jump into the Q&A. One thing that, I've been hiring in this for a long time
now. Was a salesperson for 5 years. So the sales rep for 5 years and then since then, all my time has been in management for Wiley, so a lot of hiring and one of the biggest things that I look for
is somebody that's curious. I want somebody that is gonna go into that faculty member's office,
so I work in the Higher Ed division, that is gonna be wanting to understand what they're trying to accomplish with their students in the class and find out what the students are are struggling with.
And curiosity to me is one of the the biggest skills, things that people have to have going into.
Listening is also another big thing, as everybody said. So it's and it's I remember somebody saying to me recently, that worked at a different part of our business in Wiley, that they, their previous manager only wanted them to hire people that were from within the industry. And I find that's not something, approach that
I take. I know that's not an approach that Phil takes. We're looking for the right person for the job.
It doesn't necessarily, it can be a graduate that's just come out of university.
It can be somebody coming from a different industry. If they have what we are looking for, we will give them an opportunity, a chance.
Lots of our people, like Phil said, never thought about sales.
A lot of them were English background, or and it's just they got into sales and we interviewed them.
We had one that was actually filming documentaries, and she never, ever thought that she could be a sales rep, and Phil hired her, and do you remember when I talked to her, she's like, Yeah, I've never really interviewed anybody.
And I said, What do you do in a documentary when you're filming the documentary? You're talking to somebody.
You're asking questions. You're trying to understand what they're doing.
That's sales. Like, and she, she was amazing at it. Phil had a great hire.
So there, so I'll jump into the questions and I'll start with the top, and I think the first one was from the very beginning.
It came up, and it was one for me, so I'll handle it.
It was, how is the success team different than the sales team?
And that's with, because I manage the Success and the Sales team.
So, easiest way to answer that is our success team works with our customers to try to implement the digital platforms that we have into the classroom, into their classrooms.
So we, they train the faculty on using our online system.
And they work to make sure that it's a success in the classroom.
Hence, success team. They try to make sure that they have a successful year working with the digital platform in the classroom. Whereas the salespeople, they actually are pre-close.
So they're trying to convince the faculty member to use the product in the classroom.
So it's, they're the pre-close. Post-close is the success team that jumps in and trains faculty.
They work very closely together, because obviously those are customers that the sales team still sells to.
But they work hand in hand to try to make sure it's a good experience for the faculty in the classroom.
Next one is, in the case of fiction trade books, my understanding is that author's platform matters in terms of building relationships with readers.
Emotions equals sales. Does it matter the same or less when selling to bookstores or distributors?
Okay.
I can take that, Kyle. Yes, these days the author platform counts for a heck of a lot, and when, when we're selling books to a designated buyers within bookstores and also wholesalers, or even libraries, who mostly buy the books from wholesalers, collection development or
selectors, the author's online profile is, becomes a sales handle.
I'm selling a book right now by Floyd Mayweather, the boxer, former boxer. And, you know, who is Floyd, anyway?
And really, all I have to say is, he has 28 million Instagram followers.
That's it. He talks about his book on Instagram,
we've reached all those people. The number of people an author has linked on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook,
it all, it all counts now. But it depends on what area they're in.
If they're, if it's cookbooks, what's a reasonable number? Versus fiction, what's a reasonable number?
But, generally speaking, author platforms are extremely important, and they now are a criteria that many publishers use when they sign a book and offer a contract to an author.
And if you don't have an author platform, are you going to get one?
It's, it's basically needed to make your book a success.
Thanks, Matt. The next one is, what is the male, female ratio in sales and publishing? Overall,
are women considering sales roles and vice versa?
I realize that's a good question, because all of us on here are males.
Yeah.
But that's a little different in the industry. So maybe Phil, you wanna tackle that one.
Sure. Sure I can answer briefly about that. The, the, I would suggest out of our 14 reps, or 11.
We have 2 male reps.
Yeah. So 12 are females. We have a, we have an author actually of one of our titles, international business title, who's at,
he's at Brigham Young University in the U.S.
And he has, he's done all sorts of research on sales, and you know he has a, an incredible paper that he is written
that shows that a consultative female will outsell an aggressive male any day of the week, and it is very, very interesting data. As far as the sales and the leadership within Higher Ed
at Wiley, I'll let Matt speak to the trade, and Ahmad, if you want to speak to Oxford,
But a very large percentage of our leadership is, is females as well
if I'm getting that correct. Our leader of academic learning is, and a number of our leaders, of our divisions,
I don't know how we call lines of revenue is what we call them, but it, you know our business titles, all those are, all, all led actually by female.
They're all led by women.
Yeah, so, yeah, I, absolutely. It is, yeah, very much.
Ahmad, how about your experience from Oxford?
I think it's pretty balanced, I would say.
We have also a lot of females on the sales team, so I, I wouldn't say this sales field is dominated by, by men, although all of us here are men.
So yeah, it's pretty much balanced.
Matt, how about on the trade side at Wiley?
Well, there's usually, and every trade environment I've been in,
there's usually more women than men. And when I started in the business in the 1980s, it was definitely male dominated.
There are still, still is an over-representation of males and higher executive levels.
There's still our boys clubs in the industry.
There still are men behaving badly, but it is changed a lot over the last 20 years, and really, it's an incredibly welcoming environment that way.
I've worked for women in, in every environment I've been in, in publishing.
It's been at least 50/50, if not more women than men.
And I think that's one of the strengths of the industry,
is that we are, we are well-represented. The next step is people of color,
Aboriginal people. Publishing has got a lot of work to do there, but at least from a gender point of view, there is balance that needs to make it into the executive suite
now, in my opinion.
Awesome. Thank you, guys. We got time for probably a couple more.
So what advice would you give to someone wanting to pivot from working in a sales role in a different industry
and how did you start in your career?
Maybe Ahmad, you want, or Matt, you want to start?
Well, I'll, I'll give, I'll give an example.
One of the leading wholesalers in Canada,
they've just gone through some management changes, and I was talking to the, the guy who was,
who heads it, and this company has a lot of work to do.
And I asked myself, Where were you before this? And he said he was from a nonprofit, and before that he spent most of his time in the automotive industry.
So here he is in the book business. So it, it,
the book business can be very forgiving. I think,
is that lot of people can come into the industry and be successful. It's got,
it's totally its own ecosystem. It's got its own jargon.
It's, it's an all-consuming industry.
But it, it's, it's definitely open.
And it,
being able to pivot to it is, is certainly worthwhile to take a look at.
Alright!
How I started. I was in advertising, and I was working with a, a design studio who were all, was also a small publisher, and one night they said, Matt, do you want to come to,
we're having a jacketing party tonight? And I'm thinking we were gonna wear jackets or something.
And they also had a small press in the basement, and they ran short
-run poetry pressings, and they were gonna do a couple 100 books of this poetry book, and then they were going to wrap a paper jacket around it.
So it was like an assembly line thing, and so they had just turned it into a little bit of a party, and and I, met these people. They invited me. I got to know them. They knew a book distributor that was looking for a sales rep and they suggested that, me, to this
distributor and I started that the distributor and then work my way up that way.
Everybody's got a story.
Can, can I add just a small piece to that, Kyle?
Absolutely.
I mean, if you're looking to make a switch in the industry, I would say, I mean I would suggest, you know, kind of figuring out.
I'm not sure if you can hear my kids at all in the background. Apologies.
No worries. Life happens.
If that's the case. Small humans going to bed soon.
So yes, I would suggest, you know, trying to make a connection in the industry, right? You've got LinkedIn, which is an incredibly powerful tool you could find, find a sales manager, find somebody in that regard
and just ask to have a Zoom call. I mean, it's, in that sense it's certainly easier than it has been in the past.
You can make those connections and try, and you know, try and try and get to the point where, you know,
Hey? Would you have something available in my geography, in my region?
I'm interested in, you know, this and this, and just, you know, I, I, I don't know anybody that would turn down, you know, a 30 minute coffee call like that, right?
I think it'd be. I think it'd be a lot of fun for everybody involved and I've certainly had people reach out to myself and do that.
And you make those connections. And you know it's like an informal interview
for both people. You know, would I want to hire this person? And would this one person wanna work on our team?
So I think that's, you know, utilizing LinkedIn, I think, is, in that way, I think, is a really good way to
if you're looking to make the change.
Absolutely. And we'll handle one more question, and I'll let Ahmad,
you can try to answer this one first. It's, how closely do you all work with marketing and publicity, and what feedback do you give them?
We work very close with marketing because they take our feedback on what we hear from the market and what we see.
We tell them directly, and then they have to feed that into their campaigns, into their marketing materials
back to the public. So almost in everything we do on our day-to-day,
we always speak to marketing. And it's a very important aspect, because since our marketing work hand-in-hand, to reach the customer, but we kind of sell and marketing have to kind of attract the customer's eye so it's very important.
They take our opinion, and that we also give them our feedback from what we see on the ground.
Awesome, anything to add to that, Phil or Matt?
It's a, it's, it's a constant interaction of, on the trade side.
We're at daily, sometimes hourly, interacting with marketing colleagues and publicity colleagues.
The whole process of discoverability. How do, how do readers find out that these books exist?
Is a, a melding of publicity, marketing and sales.
So we're all working together in an ongoing way.
That's one of the nice things about publishing actually, is that it's not siloed like a lot of other industries.
Awesome, thanks. And there was one clarifying thing that, and the question that somebody asked was, Ahmad and
Phil talked about how important digital is gonna be good forward in, in educational publishing, and how everything is transitioning to more digital.
Whereas, Matt, you'd mentioned that you thought in trade it was still like print.
So the difference, I think, there is more on the end of the technology that's used in the classroom for students to help them succeed in the classroom. That's where digital is coming. Like in ours,
you have the platform, and you have the content all in the same thing.
So it's all digital. And whereas, Matt, you mentioned that there was more print staying in trade.
Right. I mean, there was, there was thinking for a number of years that the book business quote unquote was gonna go digital.
And a lot of that thinking is still out there. What I'm saying is that statistically, that's not what happened over the last 3 years, and to me it, I don't think it's gonna happen in the next few years, because the public is making it quite clear that they like reading print books on
the trade side. But the academic industrial complex of higher education is, is an industry and, and Phil and Ahmad have talked about the interaction that is required in the classroom every day, every week with higher ed courses, and, and I think many of them are business-focused and I think we're starting to see
this separation of the function of, of online between business and, and non-business and cognition, and that type of thing.
It's a really interesting phenomenon. It's a really interesting debate.
And I think it's really just starting now.
Awesome. Well, we didn't get to all the questions, but we'll try to answer them offline, but I know we're a little over on the time.
But thank you all for being participants on the panel, and I hope this was a very helpful panel, for, for everybody that was in the audience.
So thank you very much, and have a great evening.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kyle. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you, take care!