Brian O'Leary

Advisor

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Brian is the Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group, an Advisor to Quantum Media and Founder and Principal of Magellan Media Consulting.

O’Leary is a specialist in helping enterprises with media and publishing components capitalize on the power of content. A veteran of more than 30 years in the publishing industry and a prolific content producer himself, O’Leary provides targeted solutions that help companies achieve change, improve financial results and respond with agility to consumers’ voracious appetites for content.Brian works with publishers seeking support in content workflows, benchmarking and financial analysis. He also writes extensively about issues affecting the publishing industry. With Hugh McGuire, he has edited “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto”, a collection of forward-looking essays on publishing that was published in three parts by O’Reilly Media. The full book was recently released.

He is also the author of research reports on: the use of metadata in the book industry supply chain, territorial rights in the digital age and best practices in digital exports. Brian has studied the impact of free content and digital piracy on paid book sales and was the editor and primary contributor on a study of the use of XML in book publishing, two reports published by O’Reilly Media in 2009.

Earlier in his career, Brian served as senior VP and associate publisher with Hammond Inc., where he restructured editorial operations to benefit from the firm’s prior technology investments. Brian came to Hammond after a 12-year career overseeing production and distribution operations at several of Time Inc.’s weekly magazines, including Time, Entertainment Weekly and People. Brian joined Time Inc. after earning an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He also holds an A.B. in chemistry from Harvard College.

Recent consultant engagements include:

• Workflow assessment. Evaluated the content creation processes for a higher-education publisher. Recommended a low-impact shift in the use of authoring software to support a “write once, read many” strategy, allowing the publisher to minimize changes while still meeting market demands for multiple output formats.
• XML implementation. Documented content workflows for a K-12 publisher of supplemental language and mathematics titles. Recommended that the publisher implement agile approaches on trade titles before rolling out to supplemental publications. Advised on organizational structure and staffing.
• Vendor selection. Mapped a publisher’s near-term and mid-term market goals to its workflow capabilities. Developed a draft RFP that documented the publisher’s requirements and solicited multiple responses. Managed data collection and analysis and recommended two finalists for publisher review.
• Strategic planning. Working with a trade association’s board and CEO, compiled a baseline assessment of the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats before working with the management team to draft, refine and present the plan.