I was fortunate to have a publishing professional in my family for this assignment—my aunt, Debbi Hersh, has worked for various arts organizations in the Bay area for most of her professional career in marketing departments. Her first publishing job was with Jossey-Bass Publishers (J-B), and then she moved into arts marketing at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Chanticleer, San Francisco Jazz Festival and now Oakland East Bay Symphony (OEBS). The publishing she has done for these arts organizations has been marketing and PR materials.
This interview is fairly long, but my aunt has had such a range of experiences that I can’t bear to cut it down any further!
Kirsten Hersh: What type of publishing did you do at Jossey-Bass Publishers?
Debbi Hersh: Jossey-Bass was a publisher of books for professionals in the fields of higher education and the social and behavioral. They also had several series of quarterly periodicals aimed at professionals, and the occasional book that had trade potential, or more general appeal. Sometimes the books were used as textbooks in graduate courses or professional training programs, but virtually never in undergraduate courses.
KH: And what type of publishing did you do at the Oakland East Bay Symphony?
DH: Oakland East Bay Symphony publishes a season brochure annually that describes the concerts we’re presenting and is designed to sell subscriptions and single tickets, programs that are handed out at concerts, similar to Playbill, that include information about the works being performed and the people performing them; lists of donors to the Symphony; ads from other arts organizations, sponsoring businesses and other businesses who buy ad space; a newsletter that used to be a printed piece that we mailed to subscribers and donors and is now an e-newsletter that we send via email to everyone on our email list. It’s now shorter and sent more frequently to a much larger list. And occasionally, we do postcards for concerts, fundraising events, and other events. We do a lot more e-postcards than printed postcards, but we still do some actual printed postcards that we mail to people. Printed postcards are becoming more and more rare because of budgetary constraints We also do occasional posters for events. These are also becoming more and more rare because of budgetary constraints.
KH: What are some examples of the normal writing and publishing that you do?
DH: My job at J-B was as a copywriter of marketing materials and eventually I worked my way up to be Marketing Director. So all the writing that I did was designed to convey why somebody should want to buy the book. J-B marketing copy was much more detailed, and much longer, than that of most other publishers. The head of the company, Allen Jossey-Bass, was an absolute fanatic about the marketing flyer copy being just perfect (in his eyes). I used to get really frustrated when he’d keep coming back and saying that the copy needed to be rewritten because it didn’t convey what was special and important about the book, or make him want to buy it. I eventually told him that if he would spend nearly as much time working on the content of the books as he did with the content of the marketing copy, my job would be much easier because I’d have better books to sell. As you can imagine, this sentiment was not especially appreciated by him, though many others in the company agreed with me and thought I was brave to tell him that. I eventually ended up quitting because I couldn’t deal with his attitude or work-style.
At OEBS I also do almost entirely marketing-oriented writing, like copy for brochures, postcards, newsletters, etc. about our concerts and programs. I also provide narratives about our audience, outreach efforts, marketing plans, etc. for grant proposals. And I’ve somehow gotten the job of responding to virtually every complaint that patrons send to OEBS about anything and everything because I’m told I have a knack for addressing people’s concerns in a way that satisfies them and sometimes turns angry people into our friends. Mostly I’m just honest, accept responsibility, don’t ever blame people, and try to give people something so they feel they’ve been heard and acknowledged. I find this pretty easy to do in writing – not so much in person!
KH: How much of what you do is published through other media? Such as newspaper and magazines?
DH: At J-B, most of what they published was books, with a small percentage being quarterly periodicals. I don’t know if that mix has changed, or if they offer some publications as downloadable electronic files for Kindles and iPads, but I bet they do. We also very occasionally got excerpts of books published in magazines.
OEBS publishes mostly marketing and development/fundraising materials, and some educational materials for use in music classrooms. We have a publicist who gets media coverage about OEBS in newspapers and magazines, and also in online publications. Those are not published pieces that we write or control content of – except that we do help arrange interviews and provide them with press releases that some places pick up practically verbatim.
KH: How big is the typical production run of something you publish?
DH: It varied but the typical J-B run was small. I think some of the books started with print runs as small as 3,000. I don’t think we ever started with more than 10,000 when I was there, though there were a few books that took off and went into second and third printings. I think a total print run of 40,000 was considered huge for J-B then. This may be very different now.
OEBS prints about 40,000 season brochures. Just a few years ago this number was 50% more, about 60,000. We print between 2,500 and 3,000 programs for each concert, which ends up being about 20,000 for the whole year, depending on number of concerts we do. When the newsletter went to only subscribers and donors, we printed about 2,000 each time. Now we send about 9,000 each time via email. Postcards vary between 1,000 and 15,000, depending on the event.
KH: You answered my next question about the OEBS already, but how much volume did you produce at J-B?
DH: I’m not sure I trust my memory on this, but I think we published about 50 hardcover books and 6 quarterly periodicals each season. They publish 4 to 5 times that now. J-B was acquired by Wiley in 1999, and I think a lot of things about their product lines changed and grew after that. I suspect that is one of the themes of any publishing course these days: how smaller publishers have mostly been acquired by larger publishing companies and become imprints of the larger corporation, with far less autonomy about what they publish and how they sell it.
KH: Do you find that you can re-use some of your content/templates from year to year?
DH: For J-B, there were definitely templates for the quarterly periodicals but not as much for the books, except in terms of things like the basic elements of table of contents, intro, chapter headings, etc. being common to all hardcover books. And I think that each series may have had certain standard design elements that were carried through all books in that series. As for content, I occasionally felt that some of the books were saying the same things over and over again – or worse, saying nothing over and over again. But clearly that wasn’t the intent!
We definitely re-use templates for many publications at OEBS. In fact, we have templates and standard formats for virtually everything that we publish. I think that’s partly because almost everything we publish has either a marketing or development purpose, and partly because electronic media really lends itself to this. We also re-use content when appropriate, for example if a soloist who performed with us before is performing with us again, we re-use their bio and press quotes.
KH: What are some of the challenges of publishing for marketing purposes?
DH: The most challenging thing is when you don’t have something that’s really interesting or appealing but you’re supposed to sell a lot of it anyway. No actually, I take that back. The most challenging thing is when you have virtually no information about what you’re supposed to sell and you’re on deadline for an ad or brochure and have to come up with good copy based on almost nothing. I can sometimes put a pretty good spin on something with minimal information, but I absolutely HATE publishing misinformation, i.e. announcing artists or repertoire that turn out to be wrong. This happens to every arts organization on occasion, but you really do damage to your organization’s credibility if you do this often.
It’s also challenging when artists have terrible publicity photos. It amazes me that so many artists, who are trying to make a living selling themselves as performers that people should pay good money to come see can’t even provide an in-focus color photo that makes them look good! Some artists have terrific, fun photos that show them in different poses, moods, costumes, etc. I love having those to work with!
And of course what’s happening to newspapers, the death spiral of shrinking circulation and shrinking content makes it hard to know where it’s even worth getting stories and running ads.
KH: How has what you do changed with the advent of the Internet and digital production?
DH: It’s changed hugely, and keeps changing. It’s hard to keep up with the changing ways that people get information. In addition to doing more email rather than printed pieces at OEBS, we’re also starting to use social media more, Facebook, and soon Twitter. Though there are many things about digital media that I don’t like at all, and that I think are really harming literacy rates and people’s ability to focus on anything for more than 3 seconds, I also recognize the power and immediacy of digital production and communication.
KH: What are your favorite aspects of your job?
DH: I love working with creative people and having the chance to learn about different kinds of music and occasionally different cultures. I like writing about things I believe in and find interesting, and I like to think that I’m helping introduce people to some of these things if I do my job well. I like the quantifiable, trackable nature of online media. It’s really hard to know if your ad in the newspaper was noticed and generated ticket sales, but you can track the exact number of click-throughs you get from an online ad.
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