January Meet-up Recap

As the lay-offs continue and magazines continue to fold (I’m personally saddened by the loss of Conde Nast’s Domino), our round-robin discussion at January’s meet-up focused on how our industry can withstand this current economy.

If you were CEO of the company you work for, what would you do to make your organization recession-proof? What can the industry do to make itself recession-proof?

Maybe the solution lies in the midst of the NYU Publishing alumni! There were plenty of ideas and lots of interesting answers. Some recognized that lay-offs are necessary in order to keep companies lean. Other ideas included making your product more relevant to consumers and taking a step back to think about quantity versus quality: perhaps publishers should publish fewer books?

Several people noted that the industry needs to change its mindset and not see itself as “publishers” but rather as “content providers,” thus broadening the opportunities. Print on demand was brought up as an efficient, cost-saving and, some argued, necessary technology that isn’t used as often as it can or should be.

Do you use POD at your company? What would you do to recession-proof your company? Do you have ideas on how the industry could recession-proof itself? Post your answers here. We’d all love to hear from you.