Sylvia Woods is one of the most recognizable names in the harp world. Whether you play the lever harp or pedal, professional or amateur, self-taught or conservatory-trained, everyone knows Sylvia Woods. Her first book, Teach Yourself to Play the Folk Harp, published in 1978 put her on the publishing map, and since then she has made her name synonymous with accessible harp arrangements for all.

When we ran our cover interview with Woods back in 1998, she was a publishing powerhouse. In addition to her own library of arrangements, original compositions, and instructional books, Woods was running a successful retail business—the Sylvia Woods Harp Center—in Southern California. That store had grown out of her wildly successful mail-order catalog, which harpists of a certain age are sure to remember—a little black and white paper catalog jam-packed with harp music, CDs, accessories, and kitschy harp trinkets galore. Sylvia Woods’ harp catalog and store were, for many years, an oasis of retail therapy for harpists. No one else was doing what she did.

Though a lot has changed in the publishing world in the last 20 years, Sylvia Woods has managed to stay ahead of the curve. She continues to credit her customers, not herself, with her success.

20/20

Publishing Then and Now

A lot has changed in the last 20 years. From publishing to performing, the harp world looks markedly different than it did two decades ago. As we approach 2020, we’re checking back in with artists we featured on our cover prior to 2000 to find out how their corner of the harp world has changed—and stayed the same—since we first talked to them 20-plus years ago.

“I’ve been fortunate that my customers have always told me what they want,” Woods says. “I get emails every week with people asking me to arrange such and such. Most of the time I tell them no, but I have a huge list of everything everyone has ever requested.”

Woods says she draws her arranging inspiration from that list, as well as from what strikes her fancy on the radio or in requests from brides. While she doesn’t play too many weddings anymore, she still gets a few requests from those she does play, including several of her most recent publications, “When You Say You Love Me,”  “Fields of Gold,”  “Marry Me,” and “Perfect.”

“I’ve put out some things that nobody buys. You make some mistakes, but for the most part I think I’ve guessed pretty well.”

Woods says her least successful publications have been her Michael Buble song arrangements. But largely, her books and single sheets are solid sellers. Disney is always a big seller, and “Stairway to Heaven” is always a popular single sheet seller, Woods says.

The times they are a changing

Much has changed in the publishing world since we first interviewed Sylvia Woods for the cover of Harp Column back in 1998, and even more since her first publication over 40 years ago.

1978

Woods publishes her first book, “Teach Yourself to Play the Lever Harp”

1984

Starts mail order catalog to sell her publications, as well as harp recordings, accessories, and harp trinkets

1992

Opens brick and mortar Sylvia Woods Harp Center in Glendale, Calif.

1998

Harp Column features Woods in its cover interview

1999

Launches her ecommerce
website, becoming perhaps the first in the harp industry to sell
products online

Woods is named to Harp Column’s list of the 20th Century’s most influential harpists

2008

Downsizes to a smaller store in neighboring La Crescenta, Calif.

2009

Sells her first PDF sheet music download

2011

Moves her business to her Southern California home

2013

Moves herself and her business to Princeville on the Hawaiian island of Kauai

2015

The Somerset Folk Harp Festival gives Woods its Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the folk harp community

2019

80% of her single publications are sold as PDF downloads, only 20% as hard copies

“In the early days, I was adamant that I was never going to [arrange] anything that was copyrighted because I knew it was going to be a pain.” And it was every bit the hassle that Woods thought it would be. When she finally decided to give it a try, it took her five years to get permission for her Disney collection, which was one of the first copyrighted arrangements she did. But the copyright permission process has evolved over time, she says.

“I’ve figured out how to do it, but it’s my least favorite thing that I do,” Woods says about obtaining copyright permission for her arrangements. Though Woods has figured out a lot in the last 30 years, she says the copyright permission process is constantly changing, especially in the last two years. Publishing giant Hal Leonard distributes Woods’ books, and it also administers more than half the copyrights out there. Because Woods had an inside source there with her books, she could easily just email her contact about a new arrangement she was thinking about doing and Hal Leonard would send her back a contract in a day. Now things have changed. She has to go stand in line with everyone else. It can take months to even get an answer on a copyright question.

“I was spoiled, and I liked be spoiled,” she says, laughing.

There is no question that the copyright game is a complicated one, and the rules are constantly changing. Two companies administer most of the copyrights for popular music publishing in the U.S.—Hal Leonard and Alfred Music Publishing.

“When I did my 22 Romantic Songs book in 2006, I specifically chose songs whose copyrights were through Hal Leonard. Now half of those songs are held by other companies, so I’m having to pay all sorts of different people. The Andrew Lloyd Webber book has gone back and forth between Alfred and Hal Leonard. Sometimes half are owned by one and half are owned by another. For my newest book, Favorites from the ’50s, I pay about 15 different people. To make matters worse, on some pieces Hal Leonard owns 50 percent in the U.S. and Canada and somebody else the other 50 percent and someone else owns the international rights. It’s a major pain.”

At this point in the story, you are probably asking yourself, “If it’s this hard for Sylvia Woods, is it even worth it for me to try to get permission to publish this great arrangement I did of the latest and greatest pop song?”

Woods’ reply to this is, “If someone’s just going to do one piece, it’s not as complicated. I’ve got a lot of titles and collections.” Woods notes, though, that would-be arrangers need to keep in mind that if you do get permission, contracts are only good for three years. And when it comes time to renew your contract after three years, the copyrights may have changed hands, and you might be dealing with different people. The other issue for arrangers trying to publish one song is that they are small potatoes for these publishing giants.

“The owners of the copyright figure you are going to maybe sell 50 copies, and that’s not even worth their time to write up a contract for you, so usually you are going to have to pay a really big up front fee,” she says. “If you look at it from their point of view, they’re not going to make any money, so you can kind of see their perspective, but it makes it really hard for [harpists] to get permission. I don’t want to discourage people, but I think they really need to know what it is they are getting into. They’re not going to get rich.”

Margins in music publishing have never been fat, but Woods says it’s even tighter now than ever. “It used to be that I would normally pay a 15 percent royalty. So if I sold the sheet music for $10, I would pay $1.50, and that $1.50 would get spread out between whoever holds the copyright if it was owned by different people. Now recently the people that own the copyrights have realized that a lot of copies are being sold as downloads and they can really charge whatever they want. So there are some pieces that I pay a 15 percent royalty if I sell you a copy that I mail to you, and I pay 65 percent if I sell you a download. So it’s gotten crazy. I asked a higher up at Hal Leonard why they did that, and basically the answer was, ‘Because we can.’”

The sky-high royalties arrangers have to pay for downloads has created a situation where it’s not financially feasible for them to sell their downloads on sites other than their own. After you pay your 65 percent royalty, plus the cut to the secondary retail site, there’s not much of anything left. “That’s why you won’t find my copyrighted PDF arrangements on any other site other than my own, because I would literally be losing money. It’s unfortunate the publishing industry has gone this direction because it’s really limiting and I think it’s totally unfair.”

But Woods says PDF downloads are the single biggest development in the publishing world in the last 20 years, and they are here to stay.

“I sell more downloads than printed copies [of my single sheet music pieces]—probably 80 percent downloads through my website sales. That’s a big change [from 20 years ago].” But it makes sense—you get your music immediately, you can put it on your iPad and go. Plus, exorbitant shipping costs—especially for international customers—are avoided with the PDF download. “It costs twice as much for the shipping as the sheet music for international customers.”

Woods was one of the first harp businesses to jump into ecommerce with her Harp Center website back in 1999, so it’s no surprise that she was an early adopter of the PDF download technology. She sold her first PDF download in 2009.

While her early adopter status makes her look like an ecommerce genius, Woods says it was really borne out of necessity more than foresight.

“It’s really hard to make a living selling harps. The only reason that my store lasted as long as it did is the money from my books. My books have funded everything. So I was always looking for more ways to sell my books, because that’s where most of my income came from. Ecommerce was the logical next step from the brick and mortar store. Once the technology was accessible for PDF downloads, that was just one more way for her to sell her music and stay profitable.

Being profitable in the harp world—especially in publishing—is no small feat. The market is small, so even when you’re able to scale your business to reach every harpist in the world, there just aren’t that many of us.

“When I used to sell CDs [through the Harp Center], I had a guy call wanting me to sell his CDs. I told him I had to listen to it first, and he said, ‘Well, if you do want to sell it, how many would you want to order, because I need to know how many copies to press.’ And I said, ‘Thirty.’ And he said, ‘Thirty thousand?’ And I said, ‘No! Thirty!’ I haven’t sold 30,000 CDs in my life! It seems that a lot of people expect they will be able to sell thousands of whatever they are retailing and retire on the profits. The fact is, at least in harp music publishing, that’s probably not going to happen.”

While Woods says she doesn’t have a crystal ball to see the future of publishing, she does believe PDF downloads will only continue to gain market share from printed music.

“When people want to publish their own music, I usually tell them it’s probably not worth printing books, but if you do, just print them on demand. More and more, people are choosing PDFs over printed music, and I don’t think that trend is going to change.”

Music PDFs aren’t all rainbows and unicorns, though. There is one customer service problem that plagues Woods today but was never an issue 20 years ago.

“I get emails every week saying, ‘I lost my PDF, my computer crashed. Can you send it to me?’ If you had a book, and you lost your book, would you say, ‘I lost my book, will you mail me a new one?’ No! You need to be sure you’re saving [the PDFs] to a safe place.”

Woods knows exactly what her customers are requesting, because she is the customer service department…and the sales department…and the owner. She does it all since downsizing her business and moving it to her condo on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 2013. Woods became a minimalist before Japanese organizing guru Marie Kondo made it popular. Again, Woods was an early adopter of a trend.  “I love living here. I love not having a store so I don’t have to be here at a particular time to open the door and close the door. I had wonderful employees, but I’m so glad to not have employees anymore. Life is just much easier.”

Shipping large items in and out of Hawaii is prohibitively expensive, so Woods knew she had to make some changes to her business in order to stay profitable.

“I pretty much only sell PDF downloads and anything I can easily mail, because U.S. mail is the same price, obviously. I do still sell some jewelry, and my books, and a few other items.” Woods still sells harps—Harpsicle and Dusty Strings models only—and has them shipped from the manufacturers on the mainland. Her store models have endured the high humidity and heat of island life.

“I usually have about 15 harps here, and I have a fan blowing on them 24/7. If I don’t do that, and if I don’t keep them dusted regularly, mold grows on the harps,” Woods says. “The cases can also get moldy, so I keep them in very large vacuum-sealed bags. Also, the tuning pins rust within a few months. Living on the north shore of Kauai, I’ve grown to love the beautiful brown color of rust, but I still hate the smell of mold and mildew.”

Nothing is immune to the humidity on the island, except for digital PDFs, of course. “Books mold here, as well. I keep all of my harp book inventory that I send to customers in a heated closet. The books and sheets are very happy there, and stay in pristine condition. Any of my other books that are just in regular bookshelves start smelling musty pretty quickly, and rust grows on the staples of the sheet music.”

Kauai has always fed Woods’ creativity. For years before she moved to the island, she would visit for four to six weeks at a time. It was during these extended stays that Woods would churn out a pile of new arrangements. “Kauai has always meant time to get done work that needs to be done, but that is more creative.” Now that she is a full-time island dweller, Woods is able to spend some of her time managing her business, and the rest of her time enjoying her surroundings and finding quiet time to dive into new arrangements.

While Woods has seen a seismic shift in the publishing world with PDF downloads in the last 20 years, she says she’s also seen some dramatic changes in the harp world—changes for the better, she thinks.

“When I first went to AHS conferences with lever harps and my books, I was completely ignored because no pedal harpist would be caught dead playing a lever harp. It’s gotten better every year, and I think it’s the biggest change I’ve seen in the harp world,” she says. “The best change,” Woods notes, “for the harp world—whether you’re a pedal harp player or a lever harp player—is the proliferation of good lever harp instrument. That has helped the entire harp world.”

Woods says it used to be that pedal harp teachers wouldn’t think of teaching students on a lever harp, but that mindset has changed in the last 20 years. Woods thinks that improvements in the quality of lever instruments and the varied repertoire available for the instrument have contributed to the shift in attitude from pedal harpists. Today, most of the teachers on her store’s teacher list will teach pedal and lever students, but it was not that way even 20 years ago. “I think the acceptance of whatever harp player you want to be, whatever music you want to do is much better and more open for people today. I think that’s for the good of all—no matter what harp you play.”

One thing that has remained constant in the last 20 years, says Woods, is harpists. “They are the nicest people on the planet and the best customers,” Woods says. “I said that 20 years ago, and I still agree with that.”

In our 1998 interview, Woods said her goal for the future was to get more people around the world playing the harp and to publish more harp music for people to play. Twenty years later, Woods says there is still work to be done. “We’re getting there,” she says. “I think we’ve come a long way, but there is still room for growth. Is the goal complete? No. We all still have a long way to go. But every time someone goes out and plays a wedding or plays at a retirement home or plays in a hospital or does a concert or plays outside in a park—every single time—we’re getting the word out there. It doesn’t matter what small part of that you do, you are still a part of it.”