A Saturday Rant

Of course the passing of Jan Nathan, the founder and director of PMA has lots of people in the small press talking about what the future of the organization will be. The past year I heard a lot of folks question whether or not Terry (her son) had the ability and interest to step up and take the top job. I never understood the rationale for these questions because I've always found him to be qualified and I always thought he had the interest. But it might not be up to him. He's a nice man, but he's no Jan Nathan.

The question is what the BoD will do. They have control over which company manages the organization. Of course the board has always been a puppet for Jan as there is no open, member-directed nomination process. Jan basically picked the people whom she wanted and that was that. The board chooses the officers which is why we've had a long history of PMA presidents who have done basically nothing to change the direction of the organization away from supplying members dollars to vendor's pockets as opposed to trying to level the distribution playing field.

Jan was smart. She knew that success would kill the golden goose. Let's face it, if there WAS a level playing field... such that there was adequate entry into the distribution and wholesale channel for all small publishers, where would the allure of PMA be?

For over a decade the PMA has held out the 'dream' of "If you join us, we can make you successful" with the implicit promise of (one day) getting all our books into Ingram. But until that day arrived, it would be a good idea to spend a lot of money on the PMA marketing programs and mailings, enter the Ben Franklin awards, and of course attend the PMA-U each year.

PMA has always been more about "show me the money" than "let's make deal." I'm sure the worst nightmare for PMA is e-books, where the middle channel is by-passed and publishing becomes a publicity game of getting the word out to the potential readers (which it is now... but without distribution, what does it matter?)

So what happens to the nation's largest publishing organization now that the queen is gone? Your guess is as good as mine. Jan Nathan had a charisma about her. Even those who opposed her (like me) really liked her. No one wanted to put her on the street. I don't see the same "warm and fuzzy" for Terry or anyone else in the Nathan organization.

I've long advocated that the BoD put the entire contract out to bid. Now that Jan is gone perhaps there will be some incentive to do that. No one has any particular loyalty to Terry or anyone else in the family that I can think of. Jan pretty much 'personalized' PMA around HER, not the administration. While I think Terry COULD run the association, I don't see him having the same personal loyalty that his mom had.

If I were on the BoD, I'd be looking at putting the management contract out to bid next year... but I'm not holding my breath seeing as the BoD is made up of people who never had an original thought in their entire lives, much less as a member of this board. You ever notice why people like me, Shel Horowitz, Peter Goodman, Jay Brown, Mayapriya Long, The Three Barbaras (Kimmel, Hubbard, DesChamps), Mike Kennedy, Dick Margulis, Bob Kinford, John Leonard et. al. have never been asked to serve? The answer is simple. We'd kick ass.

Well, I'd like to think it will be interesting, but my guess is that it won't be. There will be lots of talk, but probably no action. Nothing will ever happen until enough members decide to hold a special meeting (it's in the ByLaws) and decide to take action. And with Jan gone, I can actually see the possibility of that happening. Jan was a force in the book business. But Terry who?

Al Canton
Adams-Blake Company, Inc.
http://www.jaya123.com
http://www.InsuranceSolutions123.com

Copyright 2007 by A. Canton and Adams-Blake Company, Inc. This piece may be freely copied and published in any media with proper attribution to the author and including his company and URLs.

# posted by Alan Canton @ 10:35 AM