More turmoil in accountancy trade press

The ICAEW is going into competition with Accountancy magazine - its long-established in-house member journal.

For the past 10 years, Accountancy has been published by CCH, part of the global Wolters Kluwer information empire. But on Wednesday 27 July, the institute announced that it had appointed Progressive Customer Publishing (PCP) to handle its magazine and newsletter portfolio.

From February 2012, PCP will produce a new print/digital magazine and accompanying website. Like Accountancy, the new ICAEW magazine will be sent free of charge to members, students and affiliates.

ICAEW director of communications Harry McAdoo said that the switch grew out of a recognition that a lot of what it does is publishing. The deal will PCP will enable the ICAEW to be more commercially savvy about how it deals with not just the member magazine, but with technical content, faculty and student publications. “There are economies of scale about how we do it,” he added.

“What matters is not the title, but the quality of content. We will continue to build on the model we developed with CCH during the past 10 years.”

PCP is part of the group that runs 'New Stateman' and 'Press Gazette', McAdoo continued. “They have a tradition of delivering high quality content in this space. We went through a very rigorous process of tendering and have no concerns over that. PCP demonstrated that they had the strategic fit that we needed at this point.”

The transition did not come as a complete surprise, as the ICAEW cast a wide net as it sought tenders for its contract publishing workload  during the past year.

CCH has not been sitting on its laurels, however. As part of its 10-year deal, the company acquired the rights to the Accountancy title, as well as its mailing list. At almost the same instant the ICAEW’s statement arrived, Wolters Kluwer announced its plans to relaunch the magazine in January 2012.

Accountancy will be made available on a number of new platforms, the company promised, and will expand its content to appeal to a broader range of professionals “working within and alongside the tax and accountancy sector”. The magazine’s technical content would be beefed up by drawing on CCH’s professional information resources, the company added.

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