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Disparate Impact Case Study
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2013 10:25:25 -0500
While this conversation was going on, I came across this Huffington Post article by Mickey Maudlin (Why Evangelicals Have All the Bestsellers,
&ir=Books).
This article is doubly interesting because we rarely discuss religion as a category of identity which is surprising as it is perhaps the single most important identity for large numbers of people in the US which in turn is so distinctively more enthusiastic in its practice of religion compared to any other OECD country. Maudlin's article on Evangelicals and mainline Protestants mirrors our discussions regarding race and ethnicity and past conversations regarding gender and orientation. No matter how large or small the Group X, everyone can feel like they are the victim of circumstances that preclude their X from receiving proportional attention. In this instance, the author is speculating why Evangelicals are overrepresented in book sales and mainline Protestants underrepresented. You don't think of mainline Protestants as particularly underrepresented and Maudlin doesn't advance any evidence that they are in fact underrepresented, other than anecdotes.
I have suggested elsewhere that the challenge for any Group X (and for the authors and publishers seeking to sell to them) is how to
1) Increase demand for books in general and the habit of reading in particular within their constituency (as well as at large)
2) Increase quality of books (broadly defined but especially in terms of editorial review)
3) Increase the cultural and societal value attached to enthusiastic reading
4) Improve or create better market making mechanisms for matching supply with demand
5) Improve forecasting competency to improve the yield of profitable books to the total number of published books
In this instance, Maudlin focuses on #4, market making mechanisms. He indicates that the reason for the publishing success of the Evangelical community is that it has size, has large community institutions (mega-churches), has dedicated bookstores, and has targeted media channels (radio, TV, etc.) which enable publishers to market Evangelical oriented materials more effectively than to the Catholic or mainline Protestant denominations (despite their large numbers). In addition, he asserts that the mega-churches, bookstores, and media are more effectively networked together so that word-of-mouth momentum can build among them in a fashion not experienced in the Catholic and mainline Protestant communities. I don't know if his argument is well supported by evidence but it sounds plausible. So the two key take-aways are 1) Identify whether there are dedicated channels (out of the ordinary) to the Group X market and 2) Determine how those different channels can be leveraged together in order to collectively bette r identify potential successes AND to amplify the noise around actual successes so that more demand is created.
IF, and it is a big if that needs validating, Maudlin's analysis is accurate, what's the lesson that might be drawn? You can't conjure a replication of the unique circumstances of the Evangelicals. However, there is not much to stop better networking; in other words, whatever the institutional structures of Group X might be, leverage them by improving interconnectivity to serve as an amplifier.
So for idea generation purposes, let's extrapolate by analogy from the particulars of Group Evangelical and look at Group Native American, recognizing that there are magnitude issues (75 million people versus 5 million) that shouldn't be ignored.
Are there any institutions comparable to Mega-churches in the Native American context - places where large numbers of Native Americans congregate? Reservations and Trust Lands come to mind and perhaps facilities associated with Tribal Councils. Outside the context of physical Reservations and Trust Lands, are there community centers (such as the Latino community often have)?
Is there anything comparable to Evangelists' network of bookstores? Libraries, both public and school, in reservations perhaps. Libraries in states and communities with a large Native American population (in terms of percent and absolute numbers). Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina and South Dakota come to mind. Do the University presses in those states have bookstores and do they also have a focus on Native American books? Are there chain or independent bookstores in locations serving a majority Native American population and who are particularly responsive to that market?
What about the Evangelicals' media channels. How many TV or radio stations are out there owned and operated by or focused on Native American interests? How can they be identified? Are there Native American targeted newspapers or magazines?
This is a small market (only 5 million people identify as wholly or partly Native American) but fortunately it is somewhat concentrated. 1 million live in Reservation or Trust Lands. From a proportionality perspective, it is worth remembering that there are 17 European countries with internationally recognized literatures which have populations smaller than the number of Native Americans. Even though it is small, it would appear that there should be commercial opportunity. If an Evangelical author can sell 2 million copies into a defined market of 75 million, it would imply, by ratios, that a comparably successful author selling into the Native American market of 5 million ought to be able to generate a best seller with some 130,000 copies sold. When publishing success for a title is usually measured in 10-50,000 copies, that would be pretty good.
So is there an opportunity to leverage the Native American infrastructure (Reservations, Trust Lands, Tribal Councils, community centers, Libraries, University presses, locally focused chain stores and independents, local or Native American owned newspapers, magazines, TV stations and radio channels, etc.) in order to amplify Native American books sales in a fashion similar to that achieved by Evangelicals and their infrastructure? It would seem like the answer ought to be yes. It would take a lot of phone calling and advocacy and communicating but setting up some sort of intra-infrastructure network in order to identify good Native American books and amplify them for both local sales as well as sales beyond the targeted audience ought to be quite feasible. It would take some individual leadership and initiative and later some institutional backing of some sort, but I would guess that the prospects for success would be quite good.
Lots of speculation and assumptions, but I think the Evangelical article does provide a catalyst for considering a constructive set of actions with some prospect of success and a template that could be leveraged across multiple Group Xs.
For all that the art and love of reading is both an avocation and a mission for many or most of us, we cannot ever ignore, much as we might wish, that reading is a business and will grow or collapse as a business. As the nominee for Secretary of Interior pithily puts it, "You know, there's no mission without margin. If you can't run a healthy business, you're not sustainable." The whole industry of reading (book writing, editing, publishing, marketing, distribution, retailing, reading, etc.) has been subject to the wrenching consequences of all the major business trends of the past thirty years; globalization, outsourcing, disintermediation, consolidation, technology disruption, bankruptcy, fragmentation, loss of control of intellectual property, changing consumer tastes, audience fragmentation, etc. In many respects, its survival is a testament to persistent adaptability and overwhelming commitment.
Our challenge now is one of commercial survival and I think that means finding new ways to increase the culture of reading and the value attached to critical reading and as importantly, finding new ways of profitably connecting enthusiastic readers with the works they are most likely willing to buy and read. The business trends that have wreaked such savagery on the old business model, paradoxically perhaps, likely hold the keys to whatever the new model might be, the one which at the moment we only see through a glass darkly.
It is worth reading Charles Foran's End of Story (http://thewalrus.ca/end-of-story/) charting the rise and fall of Canada's experiment in Group X promulgation where Group X was the whole nation of Canada. He doesn't have an answer but there are some lessons about roads not to follow. His ending paragraph echoes what I believe to be the crux of the issue: In an environment of practically unlimited free or near-free reading opportunities where supply of reading materials grows at a far greater rate than does the market of readers, how do you accelerate the growth of demand from readers and how do you more effectively and profitably match readers to that which they wish to read?
The academy in particular, once a powerful force in CanLit, plunged down the theory rabbit hole, rooting too much scholarship in those few texts that confirm pre-existing critical discourses. It now talks mostly to itself, using an obscure dialect.
and
It is worth remembering that supporting Canadian publishing has always been a minority cause. It has also long been an earnest, self-conscious one. Once, that minority had a great story to tell, a tale of passion and commitment and people pushing the boulder far higher up the hill than anyone had thought possible. Now, two decades and one paradigm shift onward, with so much industry talk centred on the nuts and bolts of a different, simpler kind of survival-that is, as any kind of entity at all-a galvanizing cultural narrative does not seem to be in the works.
But the current upheaval disguises something essential, and more hopeful. The problem is not that there are no good stories to tell about CanLit. Rather, there are too many. There is too much literary diversity, too much good writing and publishing being done in too many places by groups with, yes, different and competing tales of their long odds and uphill climbs.
Charles
Received on Wed 27 Feb 2013 10:25:25 AM CST
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2013 10:25:25 -0500
While this conversation was going on, I came across this Huffington Post article by Mickey Maudlin (Why Evangelicals Have All the Bestsellers,
&ir=Books).
This article is doubly interesting because we rarely discuss religion as a category of identity which is surprising as it is perhaps the single most important identity for large numbers of people in the US which in turn is so distinctively more enthusiastic in its practice of religion compared to any other OECD country. Maudlin's article on Evangelicals and mainline Protestants mirrors our discussions regarding race and ethnicity and past conversations regarding gender and orientation. No matter how large or small the Group X, everyone can feel like they are the victim of circumstances that preclude their X from receiving proportional attention. In this instance, the author is speculating why Evangelicals are overrepresented in book sales and mainline Protestants underrepresented. You don't think of mainline Protestants as particularly underrepresented and Maudlin doesn't advance any evidence that they are in fact underrepresented, other than anecdotes.
I have suggested elsewhere that the challenge for any Group X (and for the authors and publishers seeking to sell to them) is how to
1) Increase demand for books in general and the habit of reading in particular within their constituency (as well as at large)
2) Increase quality of books (broadly defined but especially in terms of editorial review)
3) Increase the cultural and societal value attached to enthusiastic reading
4) Improve or create better market making mechanisms for matching supply with demand
5) Improve forecasting competency to improve the yield of profitable books to the total number of published books
In this instance, Maudlin focuses on #4, market making mechanisms. He indicates that the reason for the publishing success of the Evangelical community is that it has size, has large community institutions (mega-churches), has dedicated bookstores, and has targeted media channels (radio, TV, etc.) which enable publishers to market Evangelical oriented materials more effectively than to the Catholic or mainline Protestant denominations (despite their large numbers). In addition, he asserts that the mega-churches, bookstores, and media are more effectively networked together so that word-of-mouth momentum can build among them in a fashion not experienced in the Catholic and mainline Protestant communities. I don't know if his argument is well supported by evidence but it sounds plausible. So the two key take-aways are 1) Identify whether there are dedicated channels (out of the ordinary) to the Group X market and 2) Determine how those different channels can be leveraged together in order to collectively bette r identify potential successes AND to amplify the noise around actual successes so that more demand is created.
IF, and it is a big if that needs validating, Maudlin's analysis is accurate, what's the lesson that might be drawn? You can't conjure a replication of the unique circumstances of the Evangelicals. However, there is not much to stop better networking; in other words, whatever the institutional structures of Group X might be, leverage them by improving interconnectivity to serve as an amplifier.
So for idea generation purposes, let's extrapolate by analogy from the particulars of Group Evangelical and look at Group Native American, recognizing that there are magnitude issues (75 million people versus 5 million) that shouldn't be ignored.
Are there any institutions comparable to Mega-churches in the Native American context - places where large numbers of Native Americans congregate? Reservations and Trust Lands come to mind and perhaps facilities associated with Tribal Councils. Outside the context of physical Reservations and Trust Lands, are there community centers (such as the Latino community often have)?
Is there anything comparable to Evangelists' network of bookstores? Libraries, both public and school, in reservations perhaps. Libraries in states and communities with a large Native American population (in terms of percent and absolute numbers). Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina and South Dakota come to mind. Do the University presses in those states have bookstores and do they also have a focus on Native American books? Are there chain or independent bookstores in locations serving a majority Native American population and who are particularly responsive to that market?
What about the Evangelicals' media channels. How many TV or radio stations are out there owned and operated by or focused on Native American interests? How can they be identified? Are there Native American targeted newspapers or magazines?
This is a small market (only 5 million people identify as wholly or partly Native American) but fortunately it is somewhat concentrated. 1 million live in Reservation or Trust Lands. From a proportionality perspective, it is worth remembering that there are 17 European countries with internationally recognized literatures which have populations smaller than the number of Native Americans. Even though it is small, it would appear that there should be commercial opportunity. If an Evangelical author can sell 2 million copies into a defined market of 75 million, it would imply, by ratios, that a comparably successful author selling into the Native American market of 5 million ought to be able to generate a best seller with some 130,000 copies sold. When publishing success for a title is usually measured in 10-50,000 copies, that would be pretty good.
So is there an opportunity to leverage the Native American infrastructure (Reservations, Trust Lands, Tribal Councils, community centers, Libraries, University presses, locally focused chain stores and independents, local or Native American owned newspapers, magazines, TV stations and radio channels, etc.) in order to amplify Native American books sales in a fashion similar to that achieved by Evangelicals and their infrastructure? It would seem like the answer ought to be yes. It would take a lot of phone calling and advocacy and communicating but setting up some sort of intra-infrastructure network in order to identify good Native American books and amplify them for both local sales as well as sales beyond the targeted audience ought to be quite feasible. It would take some individual leadership and initiative and later some institutional backing of some sort, but I would guess that the prospects for success would be quite good.
Lots of speculation and assumptions, but I think the Evangelical article does provide a catalyst for considering a constructive set of actions with some prospect of success and a template that could be leveraged across multiple Group Xs.
For all that the art and love of reading is both an avocation and a mission for many or most of us, we cannot ever ignore, much as we might wish, that reading is a business and will grow or collapse as a business. As the nominee for Secretary of Interior pithily puts it, "You know, there's no mission without margin. If you can't run a healthy business, you're not sustainable." The whole industry of reading (book writing, editing, publishing, marketing, distribution, retailing, reading, etc.) has been subject to the wrenching consequences of all the major business trends of the past thirty years; globalization, outsourcing, disintermediation, consolidation, technology disruption, bankruptcy, fragmentation, loss of control of intellectual property, changing consumer tastes, audience fragmentation, etc. In many respects, its survival is a testament to persistent adaptability and overwhelming commitment.
Our challenge now is one of commercial survival and I think that means finding new ways to increase the culture of reading and the value attached to critical reading and as importantly, finding new ways of profitably connecting enthusiastic readers with the works they are most likely willing to buy and read. The business trends that have wreaked such savagery on the old business model, paradoxically perhaps, likely hold the keys to whatever the new model might be, the one which at the moment we only see through a glass darkly.
It is worth reading Charles Foran's End of Story (http://thewalrus.ca/end-of-story/) charting the rise and fall of Canada's experiment in Group X promulgation where Group X was the whole nation of Canada. He doesn't have an answer but there are some lessons about roads not to follow. His ending paragraph echoes what I believe to be the crux of the issue: In an environment of practically unlimited free or near-free reading opportunities where supply of reading materials grows at a far greater rate than does the market of readers, how do you accelerate the growth of demand from readers and how do you more effectively and profitably match readers to that which they wish to read?
The academy in particular, once a powerful force in CanLit, plunged down the theory rabbit hole, rooting too much scholarship in those few texts that confirm pre-existing critical discourses. It now talks mostly to itself, using an obscure dialect.
and
It is worth remembering that supporting Canadian publishing has always been a minority cause. It has also long been an earnest, self-conscious one. Once, that minority had a great story to tell, a tale of passion and commitment and people pushing the boulder far higher up the hill than anyone had thought possible. Now, two decades and one paradigm shift onward, with so much industry talk centred on the nuts and bolts of a different, simpler kind of survival-that is, as any kind of entity at all-a galvanizing cultural narrative does not seem to be in the works.
But the current upheaval disguises something essential, and more hopeful. The problem is not that there are no good stories to tell about CanLit. Rather, there are too many. There is too much literary diversity, too much good writing and publishing being done in too many places by groups with, yes, different and competing tales of their long odds and uphill climbs.
Charles
Received on Wed 27 Feb 2013 10:25:25 AM CST
