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APA’s Publishing House Dominates Field of Psychiatry  Technology is changing the way information—including information vital to psychiatrists wanting to stay abreast of science relevant to quality clinical care—is disseminated, said Robert Hales, M.D., editor in chief for books at American Psychiatric Publishing (APP), at APA’s 2012 annual meeting in Philadelphia. He was the winner of APA’s 2012 Judd Marmor Award.In a lecture titled “Communicating Psychiatric Knowledge: From Kites to Kindle,” Hales outlined the history of APP from its origin in 1980 as the publisher of the DSM-III through its current status today as the largest publisher of psychiatric books for clinicians in the world. He said 1,218 books were published from 1982 through 2011, with an average of 42 a year. A total of 434 books have been published since 2001, and APP currently has 765 titles in print. Today, APP designs and conducts 35 direct-mail marketing campaigns each year, for a total of over a million direct-mail pieces, and promotes its books with 12 to 18 e-mails each year to a list of over 10,000 opt-in recipients. APP also exhibits its books at 22 professional meetings each year. He noted that Web sales have increased dramatically and account for over 40% of the sales. In an interview with Psychiatric News before the meeting, Hales said a crucial goal of APP is to make science that is critical to clinical practice accessible. “Clinicians need someone to communicate research in an understandable fashion and to make it accessible in a way that the general psychiatrist can understand.” In pursuit of its mission to “publish authoritative, up-to-date, and affordable books for psychiatrists, trainees, and mental health and other health care professionals,” Hales said APP is using the latest forms of information delivery—among them, e-books and online book and journal collections—available on the latest technology, including tablets, e-readers, and smartphones, to reach as many people as possible. Future trends in publishing include textbook chapters on demand, custom textbooks for institutions, book “rentals,” and free online material. “We are now at a new stage in the evolution of information dissemination, and APPI is using multiple means of communicating knowledge to its members,” Hales told Psychiatric News. “And there will be further transformations in the way knowledge is disseminated in the future. People learn in different ways, and our task is to develop as many different kinds of tools as possible so you can reach people who learn in different ways.” |
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Copyright © 2012 American Psychiatric Association. All rights reserved.