Winning the Hearts & Minds of Authors
What is Author Experience and Why Does it Matter?
Author Experience (AX) is ultimately about perception—how authors view and feel about a publisher’s brand. These perceptions are shaped by every interaction authors have with your organization, across the entire journey from submission marketing to post-publication engagement. AX isn’t just the sum of touchpoints; it’s the overall impression left in the author’s mind. This cumulative experience plays a critical role in an author’s decision to publish and recommend to others.
While authors can also wear other customer hats within an organization (e.g., readers, members, event attendees)—and are thus part of the broader Customer Experience (CX)—their unique role as content creators demands dedicated attention. Winning the hearts and minds of authors matters for all publishers, as author submissions fuel the content pipeline and attracting the right authors helps build a publisher or journal’s brand. However, it is a business imperative for open access journal publishers, where revenue is tied directly to publishing output volume.
Author Experience Resources
To learn more about AX, explore these recommended resources:
- C&E Article: Author Experience (AX): An Essential Framework for Publishers.
- C&E Article: How to Advance AX (Author Experience) Maturity: 6 Strategies.
- ChronusHub Recorded Webinar: How Deep is Your Love for Authors and guide to AX, Author Experience – A Beginner’s Guide.
- Scholatisca Blog Article: How Scholars Think Journals Can Better the Author Experience.
- C&E’s Article: Peer Review Systems Could Benefit from Systems Thinking.
How We Help
At C&E, we work with organizations to build stronger author experiences that foster trust, loyalty, and submissions. Here’s how we can help you advance AX:
Author Experience (AX) Maturity Audit
We help organizations of all sizes assess and improve their Author Experience (AX) maturity. What we love about AX is how it brings the organization together—it requires cross-functional alignment and focus. Our AX Maturity Audit takes a holistic approach, evaluating every part of your organization that impacts AX, recognizing that author experience is shaped across departments and processes.
The audit delivers a maturity score, clear recommendations, and a prioritized roadmap, providing a practical path forward and a strong foundation for improving AX and author satisfaction. Our approach is tailored to your organization’s size, resources, and publishing model, ensuring recommendations are realistic, actionable, and aligned with your goals
Author Engagement Playbook
Our Author Engagement Playbook is a practical guide to winning the hearts and minds of authors. It outlines strategies to drive author acquisition, build loyalty, and strengthen brand reputation. Recognizing the shared role of Commissioning Editors and Marketing in author engagement, the playbook offers tailored recommendations for each function—along with strategies for collaboration to maximize impact.
Journey-Optimized Author Communications
Our Journey-Optimized Author Communications service goes beyond advice—we partner with you to design, build, and deliver communications that work. We provide hands-on support from communications professionals skilled in messaging and content creation, working alongside your team to audit, redesign, and build author communications that are clear, cohesive, and aligned to every step of the author journey. From strategy to execution, we help you create communications that reflect your brand, meet authors’ needs, and drive loyalty and engagement.