Concurrent 2A: Innovative Partnerships for Small Publishers

Raym Crow has over twenty years experience in academic and business publishing, specializing in strategic business planning, market development, and product management. His experience includes 12 years at LexisNexis Academic and Library Solutions, where he served as Publisher and Vice President of Product Development.Crow is a Senior Consultant for the SPARC Consulting Group and Managing Partner of Chain Bridge Group, an independent consulting firm providing publishing and business planning services to learned and professional societies, university presses, academic institutions, museums, and other nonprofit and commercial organizations. Crows educational background includes a B.A. from Whittier College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Joseph J. Esposito is President of Portable CEO, an independent consultancy providing strategy assessment and interim management to the information industries. Over the course of his career, Mr. Esposito has been associated with various publishers in all segments of the industry and was involved from an early time with new media publishing. He has served as an executive at Simon & Schuster and Random House, as President of Merriam-Webster, and CEO of Encyclopaedia Britannica, where he was responsible for the launch of the first Internet service of its kind. Mr. Esposito has also served as CEO of Internet communications company Tribal Voice and SRI Consulting, both of which he led to successful exits. Among Mr. Esposito’s clients have been such technology companies as Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, various publishers of all stripes, and a growing number of not-for-profit organizations (e.g., Ithaka Harbors/JSTOR, the University of California Press, and the American Nationals Standards Institute). Recent projects range from business development for a large not-for-profit institution, electronic textbooks, The Processed Book Project (experimental interactive texts; see http://prosaix.com/pbos), and consultation on mergers and acquisitions. He has participated in numerous trade shows and has written extensively in trade magazines and journals. He is currently researching new economic models for a post-copyright age and can be reached at espositoj@gmail.com.