Steve Piersaanti, founder and president of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, an indeependent non-ficiton book publisher in San Francisco focusing on business, current affairs and personal development titles, gave the keynote address at the PubWest conference of independent publishers on November 8, 2013. The theme of his keynote was "The Innovative Publisher."

1. PUBWEST 2013
THE INNOVATIVE PUBLISHER
November 8, 2013

2. HOW TO SUCCEED BY INNOVATING IN
EVERY AREA OF YOUR BUSINESS
What Small and Medium-Sized Publishers Can Do
Steven Piersanti, President and Publisher
Berrett-Koehler Publishers

3. 10 Areas of Innovation
1. Eat Our Own Cooking
2. Company Ownership
3. Author Relationships
4. Publication Agreement
5. Editorial Practices
6. Marketing Systems
7. Digital Publishing and Marketing
8. Community Building
9. Company Governance
10. Compensation Practices

4. Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Founded 1992. Steve was previously CEO of Jossey-Bass.
$8 to 9 million in revenues/year. Profitable 10 years in a row.
Publish 30 to 40 new books and new editions per year.
500+ titles in print, over 40 have sold 100,000+ copies
25 employees. Main office in San Francisco. Some
employees work from home offices in San Pablo, Carpinteria,
Perth.

5. Mission:
Creating a World That Works for All
Three publishing agendas:
BK Life: individual change and development
BK Business: organizational change and development
BK Currents: societal change and development

6. 1. Eat Our Own Cooking
Learn from and Apply Our Book’s Ideas in Our Company

7. 2. Company Ownership
Berrett-Koehler is owned
by our stakeholders:
*Employees
*Authors
*Customers
*Suppliers
*Service providers
*Sales partners
*Publishing supporters

8. 3. Author Relationships
BK Authors Cooperative:
• Annual Authors Retreat
• Annual Marketing Workshop
• Authors Mentoring Authors
• BK Authors Collaboratory
Bill of Rights and Responsibilities
for BK Authors
“Author Day” for each new book

9. 4. Publication Agreement
Author-friendly, power to authors:
• Author can take rights back if
author is not happy
• No competing works clause or
right to next book
• Author involvement in
decisions
• No bait-and-switch in royalties
• High discounts to authors
• Same advance for all authors
• Shorter, simpler, clearer

10. 5. Editorial Practices
BK community involvement:
• BK authors as book scouts
• Outside reviews for all
manuscripts
• Hundreds of manuscript
reviewers
• All book titles market-tested
Editorial work is front-loaded
Learning exchanges with publishers

11. 6. Marketing Systems
Authors are full partners in
marketing:
• Set realistic expectations -- “The
10 Awful Truths about Book
Publishing”
• Full info on what BK will/won’t do
• Market through 20+ channels
• Detailed reporting on
actions/results
• Coach/help authors to market well
• Open access to all BK staff
• Authors support other BK authors

12. 7. Digital Publishing and Marketing
2007: “digital community builder”
2008: strategic plan: dive into digital
Placed digital staff in editorial dept.,
with cross-departmental digital
team
Many experiments: apps, videos,
enhanced ebooks, selfassessments

13. 8. Community Building
Build and involve community in
many ways:
• Hundreds of BK stakeholders
participate in strategic planning
• Guests at Author Day lunches
• BK community dialogues
• BK Authors Cooperative
• Berrett-Koehler Foundation
• Annual shareholders meetings

14. 9. Company Governance
Power shared among stakeholders,
social mission driven:
• First publisher to become a
certified B Corp
• Creating a BK Constitution
• Staff together make many
decisions
• Staff meeting is highly
participative
• Board of Directors has employee,
author, customer, service provider,

15. 10. Compensation Practices
No class systems:
• Entire staff approves, revises
compensation system
• Same compensation system for
executives and employees
• ESOP
• All staff receive same annual
incentive compensation
• No secrecy; staff know all
salaries
• No annual performance reviews