ABP attempts to redefine itself - American Business Press

The search for a replacement for American Business Press president John Emery was back to square one in early May after the group's first choice turned down the job, according to sources at the trade group's 13th annual spring meeting, held in late April in Rancho Mirage, California.

However, high-level ABP executives expressed hope that the post, which reportedly offers a compensation package of $225,000, might still be filled by the end of May, when Emery planned to step down after five years. Sources also suggested that the search would extend far beyond the trade ranks. "In the past, the job was one that focused on the ad side of the business," noted one executive. "We want something more now. The editor of one of the major business magazines might be a good candidate--Fortune, Forbes or Business Week. It ties very well to the new mission of the ABP."

That mission took center stage at the annual meeting, where the talk focused on expanding membership and getting publishers to redefine themselves as information providers, not merely magazine producers. With 254 attendees, it was the group's largest ever get-together on the West Coast, as well as the largest overall since 1989, when more than 260 members met in Florida.

Incoming chairman J. Roger Friedman, president of Lebhar-Friedman Publishing, told the attendees that the ABP's strength is in representing publications with small circulations, and that the group probably should be open to non-audited magazines, business newspapers, association titles and even small, special-interest consumer books. The ABP currently has 110 member publishing companies, covering 671 magazines. However, Friedman noted, that represents just a fraction of the several thousand trade titles across the country.

"We've got so many requirements for membership that it's ludicrous," he suggested. "We have every major business-magazine publisher as a member now, so we have nowhere to go with our current base." An ABP task force headed by BPI Communications chairman and CEO Jerry Hobbs is exploring a change in bylaws to accommodate new members, with a report expected in a few months.

But not everyone is excited about the possibility. "I'm totally against letting |non-audited titles^ in," said one publisher. "I think the audit is one of the things that separates the scrupulous from the unscrupulous." Several members expressed some discomfort with the idea of allowing association titles into the ABP.

"We fight against them in postal |rate^ cases," noted one executive, referring to lower rates for titles with nonprofit status, a characteristic of many association magazines. "They're subsidized by the government, and we think that's wrong."

There was far more agreement regarding one of the other central themes of the meeting, as trade publishers explored the extraordinary potential of delivering business-to-business information in an electronic format. Many attendees described their own forays into new media. New York City-based Bill Communications, for one, in March acquired a majority share of Automated Catalog Services, a CD-ROM software developer based in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Bill is currently producing CD-ROM catalogs in three food-service markets, selling them to 600 subscribers for $600 per month, according to company president John Wickersham. Also, Cleveland-based Advanstar Communications is planning to expand its CD-ROM products from medical markets into the pharmaceutical and telecommunications industries, said CEO Ed Aster. And Hanley-Wood Publishing in Washington, D.C., has developed some innovative CD-ROM products with its advertisers. Noted company chairman Michael J. Hanley: "We definitely are branching out in a lot of different directions."

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