Message from the President - 2009
Does ever-evolving instructional information, like most life forms, benefit from a nurturing environment? If Content is King and the kingdom is in turmoil, does the King’s crown need a chin strap? Does the quality or timeliness of the content suffer when the Emperor wears no clothes? Do the forces of merger and acquisition impose a weakened state on the cultivating resources? The health science publishing industry in the United States has gone through a tremendous transformation over the past 12 years. If you’re keeping score, don’t put your pencil down. Of F.A. Davis’s 6 major competitors in 1997, none of them has the same owner; none of them has the same leadership; some of them have joined together shotgun-style; and all of them are an e-mail away from thrashing around in the corporate blender again, lest they find themselves in the corporate compost heap.
With each transformation comes a new surge of bravado to validate and justify the absurd amount of money that built their long-legged, top-heavy thrones. Power and money don’t stay neatly in their own spheres and rarely slow down to sniff the sweet fragrance of grass-roots publishing. How do these titans of tumult find the time to relish the nuances of content development when their most lucid entrepreneurial inspiration is to clear the antitrust investigation? They don’t and they won’t, because they see only forests and not trees. Their sightlines, like their expectations, are fixed only on building a virtual mountain of euros. (They invest globally but dream locally.)
Interestingly, the health science publishing kingdom has attracted new American players who are willing to sink tons of capital into the hope that you, the customer, don’t care what you get as long as it doesn’t come on that dreadful substance known as paper. They hope you will not notice the mediocrity of their content because the sizzle of their e-format du jour will surely have you mesmerized. How mediocre is their content? Perhaps its degree of mediocrity may be directly proportional to the number of times I am stuck declining their offers to buy our content. (They have an aversion to developing high-quality content themselves.) Hope their investors, a.k.a. the gullible Emperors, are well diversified. And cover up, please.
So why not sell out to the nice people with the golden handshake? They buy me lunch; they promise me more in responsibility. They tell me I can have an enormous cake and eat it, too. Would Tiger Woods compromise his opportunity to become the winningest golfer of all time for more money and a promise to rejoin the tour with a limit of five clubs in his bag? One leg maybe, but five clubs? I don’t think so.
We like competing. We enjoy the reward of beating down the devil in the details and creating….creating the best book with the best ancillary package that jumps and dances through multiple formats and wins today’s race. As you would expect, the preparation for today’s race can consume many, many yesterdays….
For example, during the last four years, our Team of lexicographers, editors, consultants, consultant editors, etymologists, illustrators, database specialists, pronunciators, contributors, electronic product developers, digital image specialists, and, more recently, marketers, have been diligently working toward the biggest deadline found on the company agenda—Taber’s 21…Bound for Greatness on February 9, 2009. And, when the Little Green Giant casts a long shadow across the competitive landscape of have-hopes and have-nots, F.A. Davis shall enjoy four more years of serving you even better.
Then, Now, and Forever. F.A. Davis has empowered Taber’s with the greatest infusion of current, relevant and practical information. When you Get Plugged Into Taber’s Power Source for Taber’s 21, you will have a lot more to plug into. In addition to a free year’s subscription to TOL (Taber’s On Line), each owner of the print version can subscribe to a free year of its content in PDA format. Every Taber’s delivery is a special delivery.
Portability, Accuracy, Breadth. For the first time ever, Taber’s 21 has a Taber’sPlus DVD. Not only does it present over 800 illustrations in print, but it also provides an additional 300 illustrations that appear only on the DVD and are cross-referenced from their entries in the print version. The added Stroke of Color and the new images on disc provide even greater breadth to its Masterpiece of Knowledge. Also included on the ancillary-rich DVD are over 30,000 pronunciations. Each Nursing entry and each Health Science entry Is Spoken Here.
Early this year, Taber’s will reach an all-time 10 million copies sold. Thank you. To commemorate this remarkable feat, I present this year’s history lesson by resurrecting Taber’s ad slogans through the last 36 years and nine editions. If you are among those Davis devotees who recognized this run through Taber’s slogan history, you have undoubtedly made a wonderful contribution to your profession. If you remember some of them, hats off to our illustrious sales and marketing team. If you remember all of them, good grief…and Thank You For Your Support. (OK, not ours.) You are presumably among the legions that seek out the best content regardless of delivery. You know that the F.A. Davis brand is synonymous with superior content and that it is still the same brand it has been for generations in serving the demands of course instruction and clinical practice. We have not been “optimized and transformed” by a committee in Amsterdam nor seduced by a private equity firm that “will change the market.” We don’t spin a wheel of fortune to decide which imprint belongs on the spine and we don’t need to gouge you with prices sent soaring by a reckless corporate transaction.
We are F.A. Davis, upheld by 130 years of independent leadership and a determination to tally on. When you see the Brilliance of Taber’s 21, A Marvel of Time and Energy, you may rejoice in the reaffirmation that Content is still King and its Delivery is a bountiful selection of his many-splendorous shoes.
Robert H. Craven, Jr.
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John V. Shoemaker, M.D.
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