'Aggressive
Whitetail Hunting'? You Bet.
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (FEBRUARY 2004)
When
F+W Publications mines an enthusiast vein, it
goes deep. No retailable nugget of esoterica, it seems,
is too recondite for the Cincinnati-headquartered magazine,
book, and book club empire, which publishes such über-niche
offerings as Aggressive Whitetail Hunting and
Raw Edge Appliqué. It operates Camp Memory
Makers, the weekend scrapbooking retreat, and The
Fantasy Football Trade Conference (er, don’t ask).
Then there’s the monthly Postcard Collector magazine.
“We have a lot of crafts titles the average New Yorker
does not believe exist,” F+W Chairman William F.
Reilly told Folio last month, underscoring
the point that while more and more publishers are hungrily
eyeing the lucrative enthusiast market, “big publishers
are not comfortable with it.”
Indeed, it may take a certain aplomb to publish everything
from Beaded Adornment to Big-Bore Handguns,
but F+W is doing just that, aiming to convert pockets
of rabid enthusiasts into ferociously loyal readers
by using its manifold publications, book clubs, websites,
and trade shows to “surround the customer with information,”
as corporate spokesperson Stacie Berger puts
it. Having now aggregated how-to and hobbyist properties
with estimated total revenues of $275 million, the company
has crossed the fateful threshold from financial buyer
to strategic player, with President and CEO Stephen
J. Kent said to be driving toward a goal of $500
million in sales by 2008. To get there, late last year
the company hired former Primedia development
exec Andrew Levy, who joins Reilly in
F+W’s New York office in the new position of SVP, Corporate
Development. The struggling Primedia, where Reilly served
as Founder and CEO before his ouster from the company
in 1999, is of course a happy hunting ground for the
niche-focused titles F+W has squarely in its sights.
No stranger himself to the trade book world, Reilly
was President of Macmillan in the 1980s, and
following his Primedia tenure launched Aurelian Communications
in 2001 to scout for publishing and media targets.
In partnership with Providence Equity Partners,
Aurelian acquired F+W in 2002 for a reported $130 million.
“Bill’s name, alone, gives them a lot of cachet,” says
one industry veteran, and Reilly’s clout has at least
added momentum to what the company calls “a strategically
focused acquisition program,” which along with organic
growth has helped F+W quadruple both revenue and profitability
since 1999. All told, the company publishes 600 new
book titles per year, with an active backlist of about
3,000.
The
paradigm began to shift five years ago, “when we started
this effort to look at the company differently — as
a platform company,” according to Budge Wallis,
President of F+W’s book division. First came the purchase
of UK-based David & Charles Group, appealing
to F+W because of its enthusiast bent and its nine book
clubs. David & Charles distributes the parent company’s
lines in the UK and Europe (F+W reciprocates for North
America), while the two companies co-publish 15-20 titles
per year. The next big buy was Denver-based scrapbooking
publisher Memory Makers in 2001 (see article,
p. 1), but things really got cooking the following year,
when in a $120 million deal F+W snared Iola, Wisconsin–based
Krause Publications, a bastion of hobbyist and
collectible tomes such as An Illustrated Guide to
Gas Pumps and Legendary Deer Camps. Krause
had itself been scooping up small enthusiast shops such
as gun and knife specialist DBI Books and Books
Americana, while also operating the hobbyist portal
Collect.com. The
unit’s subject areas don’t entirely match F+W’s book
clubs, but Wallis isn’t ruling out mining the new categories
for clubs down the line.
Finally, last July the company bought Boston-based Adams
Media for a reported $35 million, adding 140 titles
per year to F+W’s portfolio, and 700 backlist titles,
including the two-million-copy selling Everything
series. Wallis describes Adams as a “value publishing”
operation working more in the general interest arena,
but adds, “We are looking for ways in which we can repurpose
some of the editorial material that we have in our other
companies to meet the Adams model.” Unlike other growth-oriented
publishing outfits, F+W manages its new units on what
Reilly has called “a highly decentralized basis,” with
properties revolving around authoritative, gung-ho editors
who typically are not relocated to the mother ship,
which bolsters employee retention and keeps editorial
expertise in the fold.
Cross-Selling
the Clubs
Among
the sprawling list of conferences, seminars, trade shows,
and other F+W offerings, book clubs have become a centerpiece
of the company’s “affinity marketing” strategy — that
is, selling the same customers more products. Wallis
says the majority of cross-selling occurs when magazine
members join one of F+W’s six US book clubs, which include
the 60,000-member North Light Book Club (fine
art and crafts) and the fast-growing WoodWorker’s
Book Club, with 40,000 members. Meanwhile, the company’s
Writer’s Digest club has 30,000 members, although
the writing products have faced tough competition, and
a revamped Writer’s Digest debuts this month.
Writer’s Market Online is the big growth engine at the
moment, according to Wallis, offering a database of
writing markets for $29.99 per year. The clubs, of course,
also represent a prime opportunity for the company to
connect with its most die-hard consumer base via focus
groups, surveys, and “cross-category matching.” “We
can see what they like and identify any change in trends
faster than just tracking sales through traditional
retail channels,” says Becki Meyer, Executive
VP, Sales & Marketing for F+W. Affinity marketing
can breed hits on the magazine side as well: the group
created a one-shot magazine with author Donna Dewberry
called Donna Dewberry’s One-Day Decorating;
now the magazine is published bi-monthly and has
a 100,000-copy distribution.
Meanwhile, the bottom line is getting a boost from F+W’s
distribution clients, which include International
Artist, HBI, Design Books International,
and by far the largest client, Rockport Publishers,
which is having its “best year ever” from a strong graphic
design category and, yes, the booming market for origami
books. “Crafts are up dramatically since September 11th,”
says Dalyn Miller, Director of Marketing and
PR for Rockport, RotoVision, and Fair Winds
Press, who also points to mind-body-spirit hits
on the Fair Winds list, including Dana Carpender’s
500 Low-Carb Recipes (it’s ranked #28 at Amazon).
Chalk it up to those rabid enthusiasts, the Atkinites.
As Rockport owner Quarto noted in a report, Fair
Winds “had almost $2 million of profitable sales in
its first full year, and this has encouraged us to increase
the resources for this imprint.”
©2004
Publishing Trends
