Back in 2003, when then-MD Jackie Dobbyne led a successful management buy-out of Cambridge Publishing Management (originally Goodfellow & Egan), business was booming. “We were in a good position, with a high-value, three-year contract in place with a French publisher,” says Jackie. The buyout went ahead smoothly, with no redundancies or major personnel changes. But the ride was not to be so straightforward for long.
CPM specialises in integrated publishing; that is, publishing text and images seamlessly together for non-fiction publications. They also offer self-publishing services to authors. Services offered include full project management, page layout, editing and proofing, graphic design, content provision and print.
Sensing a slowdown in their bread-and-butter educational publishing in the backlash of too many government-imposed changes to the national curriculum, CPM needed to find new avenues. They quickly identified ELT (English Language Teaching) and travel publishing as areas to develop.
Locally based Thomas Cook became a regular client. “It was a piecemeal arrangement at first,” recounts Jackie, “Everything was always ad hoc. Then we went to them with a longer term plan, creating efficiencies not just on the publishing side but by ensuring that, for example, travel writers were briefed on several local areas whenever they travelled. It made perfect sense – and it worked.” Thomas Cook was delighted with the results and at the height of their business together was producing between 140 and 190 books per year through CPM.
However, things did not stay rosy for long. The devastating effects of the 2010 ash cloud, severe flooding in Thailand and widespread unrest in northern Africa, among other things, had a huge impact on tourism. Almost overnight the plan for more than 150 books for that year dropped back to just 24, and CPM was in serious trouble.
With disarming honesty Jackie admits that they’d left themselves vulnerable. “When one client becomes such a big part of your business, it’s too easy to let others fall by the wayside, and not keep those relationships going. No one could have foreseen how suddenly the market would collapse, but we didn’t have much of a back-up plan.” CPM did work with other travel publishers – Lonely Planet, Bradt, the AA and Compass – but nothing on the same scale as the Thomas Cook business.
Drastic measures were needed. A third of the company’s workforce had to be made redundant to reduce overheads, and new business was needed urgently. The issue was compounded by wider fears throughout the publishing industry as e-books made huge leaps forward in the consumer landscape, on top of global economic recession leading to reduced book-buying worldwide.
Jackie brought in external help, in the form of telemarketing consultants Blue Warthog. Headed up by Tania Verdonk, the agency actively targeted new areas of the market to gauge interest and generate business. “As publishers and editors, we’re not used to blowing our own trumpets,” says Jackie, “but that was exactly what we needed. Bringing in outside help was the logical step.”
Jackie then brought on board Jo Riches Ltd, a marketing, events and PR consultancy. “Jo and Tania had worked together before and the relationship works well, as on the one hand we are creating the contacts and, on the other, the means of reaching them,” she says. So successful is the partnership in fact that the two agencies have just announced their merger.
The key was in diversification, both of services and technology, and of clients. The impact of e-publishing could not be ignored, and clients in all sectors were beginning to demand up-to-the minute solutions.
Prevalent as e-books are in the fiction market, Jackie says there is still plenty of work to be done on integrated books in a digital format. However, working with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, CPM has recently produced a set of ten e-books to replace the static PDF-based version produced previously. “These are much more interactive,” says Jackie, “and take into account the different devices their audience will be using. What makes sense for a print publication doesn’t always work for a digital product.”
As well as developing their digital services, CPM has focused on broadening the sectors they work with. “We work with charitablefoundations, public sector organisations and educational institutions. We’ve done work for the Scottish Qualifications Authority and NIACE. We project managed the Clinical Manual for the East of England Ambulance Service Trust, and produced an undergraduate guide to the Taylor Library for Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. And we recently delivered a user guide for a software company. It’s wonderful to have an increasingly broad client base, and we are very proud of all the projects we work on. It’s absolutely imperative to maintain a balanced customer base these days,” says Jackie.
She attributes the renewed success of the business to many things, but the overriding conviction is in the quality of the service they provide. “We are excellent project managers: we have real people sitting next to each other and actually communicating. We know what’s going on with every project we work on, and we make sure the quality is second to none,” she says.
Jackie freely admits the last two years have not been easy. But the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter, and new business is picking up. “It was always going to be tough, and take time,” she says. “Things are definitely improving and we’re delighted to be looking at some significant new contracts.”
There are also signs that the wider publishing market is picking up again too, according to Jackie. “People are starting to want the non-essentials again,” she says. “A few years ago we produced a lot of gift books, cookery books, encyclopaedias of houseplants and wine, which really fell off for a while. But they’re coming back again now, which is a really positive sign for the market as a whole.”
Moving ahead, Jackie is adamant that the key will be staying true to their principles, but also ensuring their eggs are spread across several baskets. Sticking to core values while diversifying services and client base is essential for growth. She says, “We need to keep doing what we’re good at, but be flexible in identifying new areas of the market that our skills and expertise can transfer to. But, above all, we will continue to give exemplary service and produce high-quality, beautiful publications of which we can be just as proud as the author.”
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