Now you can have your Wharton to go.
Wharton School Publishing, which celebrated its first anniversary in February, was founded to export the Wharton School's knowledge to the desks of executives and policymakers.
With 25 titles and a quarter of a million books sold, its editors and authors praise the printer's initial success.
However, it may take time before the venture can compete shoulder-to-shoulder with Harvard Business School Publishing, which was established in 1994 and churns out 45 to 50 titles a year.
WSP is not the school's first effort to launch a Wharton-approved line of books.
WSP co-editor Jerry Wind worked on a series of books under the Wharton name in the mid-1980s. However, the series did not last, largely because it only published books by Wharton professors, said Wind, a Marketing professor.
In founding WSP, Wind has emphasized attracting authors from other universities as well as business professionals. This has helped to define the press as a source for a broad range of ideas, he said.
In addition to management and marketing, many titles focus on international politics and economics.
"We're looking for ideas that could have any impact on the practice of management," he said.
University of Michigan professor C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits was one of the three books at WSP's launch and has since been named one of the best books of 2004 by The Economist magazine. The book has triggered a firestorm of interest in new methods for combating poverty.
Wind was inspired to take another hack at establishing a Wharton publishing series by what he saw as executives' use of Harvard Business School books. He thought that Wharton, too, could make its knowledge readily available to executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers and could extend the school's impact on management.
While revenue data for WSP's first year are not available, Wind said that both the school and its partner, Pearson Education, are "very pleased" with the printer's performance. WSP is a nonprofit firm and offers Penn students and Wharton alumni a 30 percent discount on its books.
Harvard Business School Press, which is also nonprofit, brought in $100 million last year.
Harvard Business School professor Michael Roberto published his book Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer through Wharton after meeting WSP co-editor Tim Moore. Moore had traveled to Harvard to meet with other potential authors and approached Roberto about publishing through WSP after reading some of his journal articles.
Roberto, who had never written a book before, said the publishing process convinced him that the Wharton press will eventually be able to contend with Harvard Business School Publishing.
WSP staff "gave me great autonomy to let me write the book I wanted to write," he said. "At the same time, they gave me great advice. They did all the things editors should do without a heavy hand."
Ohio State University professor Oded Shenkar, who has written several books, published The Chinese Century: The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, the Balance of Power and Your Job through WSP. While he was impressed with the printer's global distribution, he says he was disappointed with the marketing effort.
WSP delayed making the media aware of his book, Shenkar said, and did not achieve as good store placement as he would have liked.
Wind said he recognizes that WSP still has some things to work on and that the firm is trying to improve its marketing efforts.
