The Pub Bench

What is it?  

The Publishers Benchmarking Forum allows publishers to

• compare notes on what’s going on in the market, to help you see how your company is performing, relatively. This is known as benchmarking.

There’s a big difference between thinking you’re doing something wrong, and knowing that your challenges are the fault of the market. It doesn’t mean the challenges go away, but it does mean you’re more able to put things into perspective and maintain your confidence in your abilities. And when things are going well, you can judge whether that’s because of your genius or because of market forces.

• share ideas, techniques, tricks and insights to improve the running of your company. This is known as, er, sharing!

It’s such a shame to have to pay for outside help when you could get help for free, and so tantalising to know how much time and money you could save if only you could find out - NOW - how to do something yourself. The Pub Bench will feature tips and insights - by the community, for the community - into areas like editing, rules of good jacket design, how to prepare files for printers, how to create ebooks, and more hands-on, technical advice to save you time and money. Even if you still outsource the work, you will have insight into what’s involved so you can see if your supplier is working efficiently.

Why’s it called The Pub Bench?

These are the sorts of conversations that happen in the pub, confidentially, over a pint or a glass of wine. And you’ll have noticed the genius (cough) double meaning: it’s also short for The Publishers’ Benchmarking Forum.

How can you take part?

You have to subscribe so that we can make sure our privacy is ensured. The first month is free - whilst you decide whether you find it useful or not. Simply email me for your month-long free pass, providing your company name and Companies House registration number. After that, it’s £12.50 every six months.

How does it work?

All the details are here, but in brief:

• only members of publishing companies registered at Companies House can join. This keeps it confidential and relevant.
• Any posts which suggest price fixing, or sharing of information which breaches contracts will be deleted.
• You will be provided with a randomly generated username when you subscribe, so your remarks can’t be linked to your name or company.

Do send in feedback so we can make this site as useful as possible.

 Enjoy!

Next steps: email me to get your free month-long sign-in details.