The Wiley Writer's Workshop
Synergy – it’s a good word that’s in danger of being overused. But it’s hard to think of a better one to describe the Wiley Writer’s Workshop – or, for that matter, the way it came to be. “It resulted from an unlikely confluence,” says Anne Smith, Vice President and Publisher, Higher Education. “I was on a plane with Joe Heider [Vice President, Product and e-Business Development], and he was commenting on how long it takes to get from acquisition to the actual completion of a new textbook. I had just been reading about the Sundance film festival, which in January celebrated its 20th anniversary, and I had been thinking about how successful Robert Redford has been in nurturing the creative process. The two things came together in my mind, and the idea of the Wiley Writer’s Workshop was born.”
College and university professors are experienced in writing professional journal articles. But textbook writing is a genre unto itself, with its own conventions and considerations. “As higher education publishers working with PhDs who have content expertise, we’ve tended to think of ourselves primarily as facilitators,” says Anne. “But in fact we have our own expertise, not only in stylistic matters, but also in the nature of markets, in how to address different learning styles, and in the use of technology. The concept of the workshop was to bring together about a dozen first edition authors and work with them in a collaborative way to encourage the ‘best practices’ of our most successful textbook authors. Nobody in higher education publishing anywhere has ever done this.”
To develop the workshop, which was held at Wiley headquarters May 19-21, Anne researched retreats like the Yaddo artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, NY, and then collaborated with Barbara Heaney, Director of Product and Market Development, to build the curriculum – a sequence of presentations, discussions, and activities. “The entire workshop was activity based,” says Anne. “We called upon some of our most experienced editors and marketing managers to present short cases and best practices, then asked the authors and their editorial teams to break into small groups to apply the best practices to their own titles through guided activities. Barbara wrote most of these activities. The authors found them very challenging, working hard to do things like mapping out market segmentation grids and placing their books relative to the competition. There was a considerable amount of interaction, too, such as the activity in which the authors paired off to explain the goals and visions of their projects to each other.” The presentation on new media given by Vice President and Executive Publisher Bruce Spatz also evoked strong interest.
The workshop was introduced by Bonnie Lieberman, Higher Education Senior Vice President and General Manager, and Joe Heider, who discussed Wiley’s commitment to authors – one aspect of the “Wiley Difference,” which Bonnie spoke of as an important part of Wiley Higher Education publishing – and the changing nature of higher education in general. One of several high points was provided by John Schermerhorn of Ohio University, a highly successful Management author who attended the workshop as a sort of mentor. “He did an extremely entertaining one-hour presentation on being a Wiley author,” says Anne. “At the same time, he assured the authors they had made the right choice in going with Wiley, and he made himself available to everyone throughout.” The participants also clearly enjoyed President and CEO Will Pesce’s capstone presentation on Wiley’s educational mission and the company’s growth over the last 10 years, as they did Board of Directors Chairman Brad Wiley’s Sunday brunch discourse on Wiley history and the craft of editing.
“It was a great workshop,” said Education author Dougal MacDonald afterward, “and certainly made clear to us that Wiley is truly different.” And Psychology author James Hansell wrote, “The workshop was a terrific experience. Our shared dedication to doing all it takes to make this project successful is indeed exciting. Wiley is definitely the place to be, and we’re going to make sure that our book is the book to have.”
About that synergy: “It hadn’t occurred to me,” says Anne, “how much we’d be educating our editors in the process of educating the authors. We have our own retreats every year, but it’s much more effective for them to learn about the writing process this way. It’s given our acquisitions editors a common vocabulary and an expertise we hadn’t had before. All the material from the workshop has been put on our Intranet. Editors are drawing on it for the benefit of authors who weren’t able to attend, and they’ve already asked us to present the workshop again in six months.”