R12 OTHE GLOBE AND MAIL | SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020
THIS
WEEK
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LAST
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WEEKBESTSELLERS
Astoryaboutamotherandsonfleeingtheirhomeland,thememoirsofapop-musicandreality-TVsuperstar,adebutthriller
aboutawomanthrustintoamysterioustragedyandachronicleofhowCrosbychangedhockeytopthelistsforFeb.5toFeb.11
FICTION NON-FICTION CANADIANFICTION CANADIANNON-FICTION
1
AMERICANDIRTbyJeanineCummins
(Flatiron).$23.99
12
THEWIVESbyTarrynFisher(Graydon
HouseBooks).$22.99
23
SNUGbyCatanaChetwynd(Andrews
McMeel).$19.994
GOLDENINDEATHbyJ.D.Robb(St.
Martin’sPress).$38.505
THEFAMILYUPSTAIRSbyLisaJewell
(Atria).$24.99
36
THETATTOOISTOFAUSCHWITZ
byHeatherMorris(HarperPaperbacks).
$24.9967
THEGIRLSWITHNONAMESby
SerenaBurdick(ParkRow).$21.99
48
WHERETHECRAWDADSSINGby
DeliaOwens(G.P.Putnam’sSons).
$35.0059
WOMANONTHEEDGEby
SamanthaM.Bailey(Simon&Schuster).
$24.99810
RECIPEFORAPERFECTWIFEby
KarmaBrown(Viking).$24.9571
OPENBOOKbyJessicaSimpsonand
LouHtims(DeyStreet).$35.992
THEMAMBAMENTALITYbyKobe
Bryant(MCD/FSG).$45.503
EDUCATEDbyTaraWestover(Little
Brown&Co.).$22.99
14
MOSTVALUABLEbyGaryJoyce
(Viking).$32.955
FROMTHEASHESbyJesseThistle
(Simon&Schuster).$24.99
36
TALKINGTOSTRANGERSby
MalcolmGladwell(LittleBrown&Co.).
$36.9947
YOUAREAWESOMEbyNeil
Pasricha(Simon&Schuster).$29.9978
AVERYSTABLEGENIUSbyCarol
LeonnigandPhilipRucker(Penguin).
$40.009
SUCCESSFULAGINGbyDaniel
Levitin(AllenLane).$34.00
210
THEBODYbyBillBryson(Doubleday
Canada).$38.00
51
WOMANONTHEEDGEbySamantha
M.Bailey(Simon&Schuster).$24.99
22
RECIPEFORAPERFECTWIFEby
KarmaBrown(Viking).$24.95
13
THEHANDMAID’STALEbyMargaret
Atwood(McClelland&Stewart).$19.95
34
THETESTAMENTSbyMargaret
Atwood(McClelland&Stewart).$35.0065
SMALL GAME HUNTING AT THE
LOCALCOWARDGUNCLUBby
MeganColes(HouseofAnansi).$22.9546
HUNTINGFORAHIGHLANDERby
LynsaySands(Avon).$10.99
57
SONOFATRICKSTERbyEden
Robinson(VintageCanada).$21.00
88
THEMARROWTHIEVESbyCherie
Dimaline(DancingCat).$14.95
99
STILLWATERbyAmyStuart(Simon&
Schuster).$12.9910
WHENWEWEREVIKINGSby
AndrewDavidMacDonald(Scout).
$24.991
MOSTVALUABLEbyGaryJoyce
(Viking).$32.952
FROMTHEASHESbyJesseThistle
(Simon&Schuster).$24.99
23
TALKINGTOSTRANGERSby
MalcolmGladwell(LittleBrown&Co.).
$36.9934
YOUAREAWESOMEbyNeilPasricha
(Simon&Schuster).$29.99
45
SUCCESSFULAGINGbyDanielLevitin
(AllenLane).$34.00
16
THESKINWE’REINbyDesmondCole
(DoubledayCanada).$29.95
57
12RULESFORLIFEbyJordan
Peterson(RandomHouseCanada).
$34.9568
WEHAVEALWAYSBEENHEREby
SamraHabib(Penguin).$24.95
89
FINDYOURPLEASUREbyCynthia
Loyst(Simon&Schuster).$32.99
710
BEYONDTHETREESbyAdamShoalts
(AllenLane).$32.95FORCOMPLETEBESTSELLERCOVERAGE,VISITTGAM.CA/BESTSELLERS
ThebestsellerlistiscompiledbyTheGlobeandMailusingsalesfiguresprovidedbyBookNetCanada'snationalsalestrackingservice,BNCSalesData.
TheCanadianFictionandNon-Fictionbestsellerlists,andtheCanadianSpecialtyBookslist,arecompiledforTheGlobeandMailbyBookNetCanada.
W
hen marketing guru Joe
Jackman set out to write
a book about his day job- reviving tired retailers such as
Old Navy – he turned to his wide
network of contacts for publish-
ing advice.
A business acquaintance at
one of the big publishers warned
him that he would inevitably
lose some control of the message
if he went with a major publish-
ing house. Yet another business
contact suggested he seek an al-
ternative, more collaborative op-
tion: boutique publishing firm
Page Two. It’s run by two veter-
ans of established houses and
gives the author more leeway to
shape the product.
“That appealed to me,” rookie
author Jackman says in an inter-
view about his new book,The Re-
inventionist Mindset: Learning to
Love Change and the Human How
of Doing It Brilliantly, published
by the Vancouver-based Page
Two. “I obsess over the details of
things.”
Just as Jackman’s consulting
firm rushes to reinvent troubled
businesses, Page Two is among a
small but growing band of pub-
lishing concerns that are racing
to do their bit to reshape the
challenged publishing world in a
fast-changing digital age.
Page Two and some other
startups are “hybrids”: a cross
between self-publishing and pro-
viding authors with specialty ser-
vices, such as editing and design
work. Still others are beginning
to focus on crowdfunding to
raise money for writers.
Business consultants, includ-
ing Jackman, and other experts
increasingly are signing up with
an array of these alternative pub-
lishers rather than their tradi-
tional rivals as a way to have
more say over the finished prod-
uct and timing of its release. Con-
sultants are writing books to use
as something of a calling card to
raise their profile and lure clients - whether or not they make
money from it, says Maggie Lan-
grick, chief executive of LifeTree
Media in Vancouver, another hy-
brid publisher. And they appre-
ciate getting the help of veteran
editors and other specialists.
For many business advisers, a
book is the “price of entry,” she
adds. “You have to have a book if
you want to be taken seriously as
a consultant.”
Hybrid publishers tend to fo-
cus on non-fiction books be-
cause their authors are experts
who are adept at marketing their
own products, she says. The pub-
lishers are drawn to business
books at a time when major pub-
lishers are producing fewer of
them.
Greg Ioannou, founder of hy-
brid publisher Iguana Books in
Toronto, says his and other hy-
brids can be more nimble, pro-
ducing books in as little as six
months compared with two to
three years at the major publish-
ing houses.
Iguana Books now sends some
of its authors to crowdfunding
site Indiegogo to raise money for
their would-be tomes. Later this
year, Ioannou plans to launch
PubLaunch, a crowdfunding site
tailored specifically to raise mon-
ey for authors and their suppli-
ers.
Crowdfunding can be a good
test of whether a book will have a
potential market, he says. Lon-
don-based crowdfunding pub-
lisher Unbound is starting to sell
some books in Canada, industry
insiders say. (An Unbound offi-
cial could not be reached for
comment.)
“Page Two and other compa-
nies like them have elevated the
standards, if you want to call it,
of self-publishing – that term has
evolved,” says literary agent Rick
Broadhead, who represents au-
thors such as Howard Green
(Railroader: The Unfiltered Genius
and Controversy of Four-Time CEO
Hunter Harrison), who have used
Page Two and another Vancouv-
er-based firm, Figure 1. “The op-
tions are much more sophisticat-
ed now.”
Figure 1 teams up with art gal-
leries and chefs to produce high-
end illustrated tomes, says co-
founder Chris Labonte, another
veteran of established publish-
ing.
Still, Labonte warns that while
some hybrids are thriving, other
alternative publishers have
floundered. “Successful book
publishing remains very chal-
lenging,” he says. “Those who
have found success in new mod-
els tend to be seasoned publish-
ing professionals, often having
cut their teeth in traditional
trade publishing.”
Broadhead cautions the alter-
natives are not for everybody.
They work for authors such as
Jackman who are well connected
and can help spread the word of
their new book. He’s a regular on
the speaking circuit, where his
book can be sold at healthy prof-
it margins.
But authors such as Jackman
take on more risk and upfront
costs, compared with working
with a traditional publisher,
which assumes the risk and
control, Broadhead says. For one,
traditional publishers often pay
writers an advance fee of be-
tween roughly $10,000 and $1-
million or more for signing on to
write a book.
Jesse Finkelstein, co-founder
of Page Two, says Jackman’s en-
trepreneurial bent matched up
well with her six-year-old pub-
lishing firm’s aim to serve au-
thors who want to break out of
the conventional mould, but still
get support from a team of sea-
soned specialists. She even
learned from his business in-
sights. “I’m part of a young, very
disruptive and very innovative
company and yet we have to stayon our toes all the time ...
“There’s something that is re-
ally key to the kind of authors we
serve, including people like Joe,”
she adds. “They’re entrepre-
neurs, business leaders, innova-
tors, people who in every other
aspect of their work do have con-
trol or a great deal of control.”
LifeTree, for example, has two
types of authors: those who are
business consultants or other ex-
perts and do a lot of public
speaking where they can drum
up interest in their book; and
writers who have a strong online
following – especially bloggers –
and write on food, parenting and
other lifestyle issues, Langrick
says.
The authors want to influence
everything from marketing to
compensation. Page Two’s au-
thors can make twice as much or
more as those at traditional pub-
lishing houses, Finkelstein says.
For example, while writers usu-
ally get an advance from their
publisher, plus roughly 8 per
cent to 10 per cent (in royalties)
of retail sales of print books in
conventional publishing, Page
Two authors take in about 30 per
cent of retail sales (and 100 per
cent of bulk sales, minus dis-
counts for the purchaser and
shipping costs, at speaking
events.) But those authors pay
Page Two a fee-for-service.
David Swail, president of the
Canadian Publishers’ Council,
which represents major publish-
ers, says fee-for-service compen-
sation is relatively uncommon in
the industry, with firms such as
Page Two bridging the gap be-
tween self-publishing and a firm
of seasoned publishing experts.
Swail says Page Two gives Jack-
man final say on the finished
product while letting him tap in-
to his marketing savvy to tout his
book in an era when even estab-
lished publishers have scaled
back on promoting authors. “He
has all the chops to know where
he needs to go with that,” Swail
says. On YouTube alone, Jack-
man already has had tens of
thousands of views of the video
he posted on Jan. 15 about his
book.
Jackman says he wrote his
book to pass on insights to his
own staff and others. He says hedidn’t write it specifically to lure
more consulting clients, of which
he says he has plenty. But he
adds: “Would I like additional
opportunities? Sure.”
He says he originally had
thought of writing a textbook.
But his editors at Page Two felt
he could do more. “My publisher
said: ‘You write stiffly, but you
speak fluidly. So just write the
way you speak.’ And that’s what I
started to do,” Jackman says.
He also sought advice from
Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo
Books & Music, the country’s
largest book chain, and one of
his many contacts. She encour-
aged him to do it and had a tip
for him. She suggested he incor-
porate his company’s signature
colour – hot pink to denote bold-
ness – in the book’s cover design
“because it will cut through,” he
recalls her saying.
He took her advice, and didn’t
have to get the nod from his pub-
lisher to do so.Jackman’s consulting firm, Jack-
man Reinvents, has advised
about 40 ailing companies over
12 years about getting back on
their feet, ranging from clothier
Old Navy to office-supplies chain
Staples and drugstore specialist
Rexall.
His advice to clients applies to
almost every type of organiza-
tion, even publishers, and has
never been more critical: If busi-
nesses stand still, they risk being
overtaken by the swift pace of
change in today’s digital age.
His consulting work calls on
clients to constantly re-evaluate
how to serve consumers’ shifting
needs. His team identifies what
made a business – usually falter-
ing retailers – successful in the
first place and seeks to update
that DNA to lure back customers.
Move quickly, he advises, and be
bold; set “big, hairy audacious fi-
nancial goals” and keep checking
the results.
In the case of Old Navy, Jack-
man’s team found that the chain,
a 1990s destination for afforda-
ble, casual fashion, had gone
stale by 2008 after rivals had co-
pied its strategy. But what had
made Old Navy stand out was its
fun approach to shopping, hesays.
Jackman pushed for a more
lighthearted tack. The chain in-
troduced new yoga wear and
store prototypes, dropped busi-
ness and evening fashions and
launched a buzz-generating mar-
keting blitz based on a family of
plastic mannequin characters.
Staples is a more recent client
and a work-in-progress. Custom-
ers – many small-business oper-
ators – could purchase office sup-
plies at Amazon and other rivals,
Jackson’s firm found, but they
hankered after something more:
a community of other people to
learn from. His fix: remodelled
stores with a speakers’ corner,
work-sharing space and low-
priced, high-margin private label
products that are unavailable
elsewhere. Sales in the renovated
stores jumped in the double di-
gits, he says.
Still, Jackman is candid in the
book about his setbacks. In those
cases, particularly at retailers Vi-
tamin Shoppe and David’s Bridal,
new top leaders had arrived in
the midst of Jackman’s work and
weren’t on board with his blue-
print. Or the company didn’t get
employees up to speed on the
changes, resulting in confusion
and poor communication with
customers.
Jackman got inspiration for
his consulting firm, which he
started in 2007, from his time as
an executive at Loblaw Cos.,
helping the grocery titan a year
earlier spearhead a massive res-
tructuring.
In his book, Jackman called
the Loblaw makeover process
“messed up,” “ugly” and “demor-
alizing.” His takeaway is that
companies going through big
shakeups fail to tell employees
what is happening and why, re-
sulting in “cultural toxicity.”
When he left Loblaw, he resolved
to do it better.
Yet when it came to his own
consulting firm, he neglected to
see early signs of a slowdown in
his business after almost a dec-
ade of robust sales gains. Ironi-
cally, he stalled in making chang-
es. It was precisely what he ad-
vises his own clients not to do.
He finally got around to reinvent-
ing Jackman Reinvents a few
years ago and, he concedes, “it
was painful.”
Jackman found that his firm
had become too top heavy, slow-
ing decision-making. He cut as
much as 30 per cent of his staff of
about 110 – some of them friends
and close colleagues – and put
more control in the hands of
mid-managers. People from dif-
ferent disciplines stopped work-
ing “in silos” and joined together
in their initiatives for clients. He
says he went about the revamp-
ing in a more human way, care-
fully explaining his moves to
staff. The firm is now back to
about 100 employees and this
spring is moving to new custom-
built offices in the hip Liberty
Village district of Toronto from
downtown space.
Reinventing his own firm and
many others made him realize
that he had some lessons to
share in a book.Special to The Globe and MailAlt-publishershelpkeepauthorsincontrol
Businessexpertslookingtoraisetheirprofile
withabookareincreasinglyturningto
‘hybrid’firmsthatletthemhavemoresayover
thefinishedproductandthetimingofitsrelease
MARINASTRAUSS
AuthorandmarketingguruJoeJackmansoughtadvicefromIndigochief
executiveHeatherReismanwhilewritinghisbookTheReinventionist
Mindset.Shesuggestedheincorporatehiscompany’ssignaturecolour
–hotpinktodenoteboldness–inthebook’scoverdesign.| ARTS & BOOKS