'IT'S a global publishing house so the parties are global as well,' says Peter Booth Wiley, chairman of John Wiley & Sons, who has just flown in from celebrations and meetings in New Delhi for some merrymaking in Singapore - before going on to Melbourne and Brisbane to do more of the same.
Wiley has good reason to uncork the bubbly: although Wiley Asia has been headquartered in Singapore for just 26 years, the parent company reached 200 years of publishing this year. Among its vast array of titles, it produces the hugely successful For Dummies series, so it looks like being around for quite a few years to come.
As Wiley's company's president and CEO William J Pesce remarks, usually 'countries celebrate bicentennials, not companies'.
Equally significant in terms of lineage is the unbroken presence of the Wiley family in the company: Peter Wiley is a sixth generation family member to be involved in Wiley. Born in 1942, he joined the board in 1984 and succeeded his brother, Bradford Wiley II, as chairman in 2002.
While on the subject of unbroken lineage, Mr Wiley points out that Wiley itself has been a continuing part of people's history since Charles Wiley opened a print shop in 1807 in lower Manhattan. 'We have been an integral part of every generation's journey since our founding,' says Mr Wiley. 'We have published early American literature, definitive textbooks in many fields of study, the works of Nobel laureates - and more.'
Best governance practices
Over the past decade, Mr Wiley has helped develop best governance practices at Wiley, such as recruiting seven new directors who have enhanced the board's reputation for independence. During his tenure, Wiley has moved content online, in interactive and user-friendly applications so that Wiley today has become a truly global enterprise, with publishing operations all around the world.
As a journalist and author himself, Mr Wiley has published five books, while his articles and columns have appeared in newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. His first publication - The Wiley Herald - was put out on an old Remington typewriter while he was still in grade school.
He attributes his political activism form of journalism to growing up in a house full of books, with politically aware parents. He recalls 'going with my mother to the train station in New Jersey, and handing out leaflets on the League of Women Voters, an educational organisation without political affiliations.'
He says: 'The 1950s were a scary time. There was a sense of living in a dangerous world with air-raid shelters, a town-wide drill and TV footage of the nuclear test in the desert.'
The civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and the larger socio-economic implications of these led Mr Wiley to feel he had an obligation to deal with these issues. And that, he laughs, 'definitely took me away from the family business'.
He was also a religiously aware young man, on whom the Rev William Sloane Coffin's statement - that Christianity was about social justice - made a big impression. Today, Mr Wiley describes himself as a 'seeker'. He says he is fascinated by religion, how it's such an 'integral part of the human experience and a determinant of human behaviour.'
Mr Wiley graduated with a bachelor in English literature from Williams College and a masters in history from the University of Wisconsin. Journalism took over his life, as he became a founder, writer and editor of Leviathan, a review of current events in San Francisco, then an editor/reporter at The Bulkhead, a newspaper for military personnel.
In 1981 he and Bob Gottlieb started a syndicated newspaper column, Points West, covering the western US and the Pacific Basin.
Turning to books, Mr Wiley's understanding of politics, history and the dynamics of cities shaped the first volume he co-authored with Gottlieb, Empires in the Sun: The Rise of the New American West.
He remarks: 'I knew, since it was an old family business, there would come a time when I'd need to make a decision.' But he doesn't for a moment regret his career in journalism. 'Go out into the world and do something else first,' is the advice he gives his seven children, aged between 10 and 39. 'It will give you a better sense of yourself and who you are, even if you eventually join the business.'
Mr Wiley reminisces about a summer internship at Wiley in 1962 when 'I was a little overwhelmed, because at this stage, we were primarily a scientific and technical publisher. Science and math aren't my strengths!'
However, when at age 41, Mr Wiley eventually joined the family company, the process felt 'natural'. He says: 'The love of the craft was there, and the fit was perfect. We were also doing many different kinds of publishing at that time, of which I had a special knowledge from an author's perspective.'
At Wiley, he went straight into a governance role, and brought to it the same curiosity and moral obligation to do the right thing that had shaped his career as a journalist.
'Wiley has a mystique because it is a family business,' he says, talking of the sense of duty he felt towards employees and family members. 'There had been an unbroken line of Wileys at the head of the business for 172 years, till 1979, when my father's successor was a professional manager.
'So, when I joined, we were in the process of defining the relationship of the family with the company in a different way. The business had grown large and complex; it made sense to have professional management, and for the family to be involved in governance.'
In other words, 'to have an oversight role, to be responsible for the entity of Wiley, to review financial results and strategic management plans, all financial reporting and the audit functions, deal with compensation issues, and the succession of the CEO.'
As for expanding the board of directors, 'I wanted critical thinking, independent voices from different fields such as academia, related industries, and non-profit. We are a publicly traded company on the New York exchange, and my fiduciary responsibility is to all shareholders. There were cautionary lessons to be learnt from scandals like Enron.'
He adds: 'It's very interesting, but recently, I read an article based on a study of old, family-controlled businesses, and how they perform. The findings were as follows: where there was strong governance in place, family-run companies outperformed others. In the publishing sector, Wiley is right up there in terms of performance, it's very highly ranked.'
Success story in Asia
It's not just in the West; Wiley's presence in Asia is a success story too, which began with the formation of Wiley Eastern in New Delhi in 1966. In 1981, Wiley opened a book distribution facility in Singapore. Today, with 12 regional Asian offices and headquarters in Singapore, Wiley Asia has grown enormously, with annual revenues increasing from about $20 million in 1993 to $100 million in 2006. It employs 250 staff, and represents the full portfolio of Wiley products, print and online.
'We've worked very hard at creating an open, collaborative environment over the last 15 or 20 years,' says Mr Wiley. 'Part of that openness is the presence of the family. Publishing is a people's business, and our family is intimately engaged in it.'
By this he means that when he's in Singapore, for example, 'I will meet with as many people in Wiley here as possible, from sales to warehouse staff. Everyone has very specialised knowledge about how some part of the company works. Ours is a listening culture: I ask the people I meet what they do, why they do it, and whether we are supporting it. When I communicate with senior management I pass some of this on.'
Mr Wiley emphasises that his is an informal feedback system that doesn't interfere with management, but supplements it. Perhaps as a result, Wiley's exceptional workplace culture comes up for praise in publications as varied as Working Mother magazine and Fortune.
What does the man at the helm of a 200-year-old company have to say about a country less than a quarter of that age?
Singapore is the regional hub for Asia, he points out. 'The long-term transformation for all of Asia is that it used to be an importer of content from the West, now emphasis is being put on the development of content here. We're seeing the emergence of publishing centres here, and Singapore will be one of them.'
Singapore is special to Mr Wiley, not just as the home of Wiley Asia, but also as that of his wife Valerie. She was born and raised here, and spent many years in publishing. The couple met at a publishing programme in Stamford University in 1989 and married in 1995. They have a 10-year-old daughter, Michela, and are now based in San Francisco.
He narrates with affection how his 'wide-eyed young daughter' enjoys meeting her relatives here. Unsurprisingly, but reassuringly, 'we encourage her to read, though we too face the challenge that plagues all parents today, called 'turning off the screens' - whether the TV or computer.'
Mr Wiley jokes about not owning 'racehorses or yachts' - so what are his own interests outside of work? Music, reading and the outdoors, he answers. 'I enjoy going camping,' he says, talking about two simple cabins that he helped build. 'It's a way of relaxing, swimming in the river, keeping it simple.'
Mr Wiley says he listens to all kinds of music from jazz to opera, and the blues. Reading can very often be centred 'on the countries where we have business interests, or which I have visited'. At the time of the interview, he was midway through a bunch of books on India: A History of India by John Kay, In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce and Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games.
Talking of fiction, while he is pleased with Wiley's fictionalised business fables that are doing well, 'literary publishing is generally high risk, so it makes sense to stick to our areas of core competency'.
He is excited about Wiley 'broadening the range of subjects, doing more educational and culinary publishing, for example'. To this end, Wiley has acquired Blackwell Publishing, a top academic and professional publisher.
Mr Wiley does not see the virtual world as a threat. He says: 'We are a content provider and what the Net offers is opportunity.'
He talks of using the digital world to build a global communications system as well as harnessing the digital distribution system. 'Amazon is huge for us, and has had a positive impact on the traditional book publishing business. It is a way of keeping our backlist alive for a long time.'
Wiley has previously worked on platforms to license journals and major reference works to universities, but 'the most significant thing we are working on now, is content management customisation. What this means is that, in a very short period of time, we will be giving, say, a professor in India, the digital capability to search across content and find what he precisely wants for his course.'
Over time, he predicts, providing customised digital content, especially for educational needs, will become increasingly important.
Other than positioning Wiley's thrust into the Net, current preoccupations and projects include 'overseeing the generational transition over the next 10 years. In terms of senior management I'm working very closely with the CEO, looking at the fact that senior management is in its 50s,and a whole new cadre needs to be groomed.'
At the family level as well, thought needs to be given to how the seven children of the seventh generation might fit into the family business. Already, says Mr Wiley, his son Jesse is an editor at Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley, 'and is the first member of the seventh generation to join.'
The Wileys, both family and company, it would seem, are well prepared to enter a third century of business in the publishing world.
