“A Really Exciting Time”: Publishing during a Time of Crisis

The world seeks answers to the current crises in the world of books, yet it can be challenging to write, edit, and release a book that stands the test of time during a year of rapid change

It’s not often that the book-publishing industry is considered an exciting business sector full of opportunity, but during a recent virtual panel hosted by the Financial Times, the mood was one of optimism and hope that book publishing can and will meet the challenges ahead during a time of crisis and unrest.

The panel, “Business Books in Times of Uncertainty,” was intended to focus on the fortunes of business books during the pandemic, but it ultimately became a broad-ranging discussion about how publishers and authors are handling multiple crises.

“For an industry often criticized for being old-fashioned and technophobic, we’ve done pretty well,” said Hollis Heimbouch, VP and publisher of Harper Business. She discussed how the industry is heartened by how vital books have remained to consumers during the pandemic and also at how smoothly the sector has transitioned to working from home. “We haven’t seen our processes come to a halt. We’re printing books, we’re publishing books.” Heimbouch did acknowledge that the fate of independent bookstores still hangs in the balance, but with print books doing well, she remains cautiously optimistic.

“[Publishing] still seems very robust, almost excessively so,” literary agent Christy Fletcher said. There’s a lot of money being paid for books, and a lot of “inventory”—books acquired but not yet published. However, given how swiftly the economic realities are changing, it’s unclear how those books will perform through this year and next. The biggest challenge is figuring out what’s going to work in the future, Fletcher said, particularly for 2021. She does not feel particularly bullish on books that try to ride a particular trend or wave of interest, even pandemic-related. “Who would have thought that the news dominating the US right now would be racial protests in the middle of a pandemic, and we have an election coming up in November.” She does expect there will be at least one timely book that will work and “personify” what the pandemic is, but overall it’s going to be challenging to write and publish books on the crisis when the situation is so fluid.

The best business books have a long shelf life and hold value over the long-term. That message was frequently repeated. Heimbouch said, “I really want to focus on those [books] with enduring values. If you look at the books that are really selling right now, they are those books that have found a foothold and continue to sell year after year.” She believes it’s difficult to write about the pandemic right now in a book that won’t be published until next spring. Yet one can’t write a book without discussing it in some manner. Like Fletcher, she thinks 2021 is going to be a difficult year for releasing books, since no one knows the conditions books will be releasing into.

Racism is the other issue publishers must immediately grapple with. Heimbouch said her company is looking at the questions raised by the Black Lives Matter movement and what books get published, adding another layer of change and complexity on top of the pandemic and the US election cycle. Rik Kirkland, the director of publishing at McKinsey and Company, said, “Companies were wrestling with their societal role before, and now when you see the kind of unrest in the US and globally on deep-seated problems, business readers are reading White Fragility; they’re trying to understand their work place and what is their role.” He expects many books and articles about rethinking the purpose of a company in that context.

Fletcher said, “The soul searching that’s underway is important and needs to continue past this news cycle. There’s a business case for why this is so important and a societal case for why this has to evolve.” She says her colleagues realize now is the time they need to act. Heimbouch added that publishers need to create “more pathways” for books that in the past have not been considered commercial—that there must be pathways for them to be published and discovered, and publishers must create pathways for a more diverse workforce. “There is more than lip service being paid to how we need to address and change our way of operating, and our assumptions about what is important, what will sell, and what we have a mission to publish.”

Bottom line: Award-winning business author Mohamed El-Erian said that there will be a great need for books that answer difficult questions raised by recent crises, such as What does leadership mean? or What does it look like in this new context? or How do you combine resilience with efficiency—and get the balance right? He thinks there needs to be a multi-disciplinary approach to navigating what he describes as “an uncertain journey to an uncertain destination.” Toward the end of the panel, reflecting on the discussion, he added, “People are not quite sure how their internal organizations are going to look … let alone what world they’re going to be operating in. There’s an incredible desire for tools for simplifying complexity. … This is a really exciting time for authors and publishers to connect with a world that is looking for anchors, and that’s critical.”