The Premise

>> Jeniffer: Hello and welcome to the Premise. This is

season six and I'm pretty excited to be back. How are

you, Chad?

>> Chad: Good God, Season six.

>> Jeniffer: I know, right? I was thinking the same thing. We've been doing this for

six years.

>> Chad: Yeah. Here we are, us now, right?

>> Jeniffer: Look, well, no one can. Yeah, no, sorry about that.

Right next to, you know, the cat tree.

And anyway, listen, we are really excited

because today we are with a very, very special guest and a

good friend of mine. His name is Richard Williams. He's from

ipg, which is Independent Publishers Group.

They are a distributor, a book distributor.

And we're going to talk all things book distribution, what it is, how

it works and how or even if small

publishers and indie authors should get it. We're going to dive

into the good, the bad and the ugly. Richard

T. Williams is the Vice president of

Business Development at IPG where he oversees

new and existing business for the IPG distribution

program as well as for clients seeking extended

publishing services and licensing

opportunities. He is a former sales manager at ipg,

the former director of the Small Press United

program, and was once an operations manager and an

independent publisher where he earned first

hand experience of the publishing side. And we're

going to dig and into all of that today. And

Richard, you and I have been talking about like really getting behind

the scenes and talking about the publishing world

I would say for like 10 years, maybe more.

>> Richard: It was definitely pre pandemic and

it feels like it kind of came out of the sort

of the reality TV craze because you and I had our

great grand idea of many, many moons ago

that we're not going to talk about here because we still

might want to see this into fruition someday. So we got to keep our

plans a secret.

>> Jeniffer: We got to keep them close to the chest as it were.

Well, I want to talk a little bit about it because I worked for a

small publisher back in the late 90s

actually and it was just like the

people who I worked with, it was just such

an interesting group of

people, I'm going to just say it like that. And it was just

funny. Like some days as I was like this should be a reality TV

show. And I remember you and I, you have the same experience because

you also worked for a small publisher.

>> Richard: I did, I did. And in fact

that seems like a lifetime ago, was, you

know, it was absolutely without question, it

was like my crash course and everything. Publishing, which I

think a lot of people who get into publishing have to

experience something like that because it tends to be the

accidental career for a lot of people. And,

and I hadn't. Yeah. And I had no idea what I was

doing. I was one of those kids who came out of college and thought,

hey, I was an English major, I can do publishing stuff.

>> Jeniffer: Right?

>> Richard: And when you start out, you think that

everybody just sits in these offices with brick walls

and giant stacks of manuscripts and pencils, and that's what

publishing is. And I learned pretty quickly

that it is everything else as well.

and in fact, that's the one thing in publishing that I really have

never done is editorial. And I'm so thankful that I

haven't, because it is just not my line of work.

>> Jeniffer: That is funny. And of course I was going toa ask you if you were a writer, even though I know

the answer.

>> Richard: You know, I grew up wanting to be a writer.

I got a creative writing major or minor

in college. And, you know, just like

everybody else who has this dream once upon a time,

then you get involved in the inner workings of the

thing that you love and you realize that it may not

be the thing you want to do. And I'm very happy

to think that I have focused my career,

because it did kind of lead me here, and kind of left the

writing for all the other people to do. Because there

certainly is a lot of good writing out

there.

>> Jeniffer: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, I want to go back to. You know, you said

something really struck a chord with me when I worked for this small

publisher and There was like 10 of us, right? We only had like maybe

12 books and they were a regional directory, bioscience

and technology directories.

>> Chad: So like, exciting.

>> Jeniffer: It doesn't get any more dry than that. Right. But we were not a

dry group of people. There were a lot of cocktail hours and

everyone had to do everything. And I remember when I was hired,

you know, I, I was in editorial, and then I found

myself doing layout. And then I was like, why don't we

have distribution? Why aren't we in Barnes and Noble? And my

publisher, my boss, was like, well, we just haven't been able to get it. And I'm like, can

I try? And I've told this story before. I was

like, we're just go goingna call Barnes and Noble every day until they order

our books. And I. That's how I did

it. I'm the kind of person that I'm like, oh, the door is locked.

I'll crawl through a window. I'll go through the chimney if I have

to.

>> Richard: But Jennifer, did it work? Did Barnes and Noble?

>> Jeniffer: It Worked. So here's what I did. We created a

spreadsheet. I created a spreadsheet of all the

Barnes and Noble within, like a 100 mile radius of

our office. And then I had it on,

you know, a sheet so you could mark it off and put the date that you

called. And literally, your job was to just

choose the next phone number in the list. And everyone

starts at a different point, so it's random and calls the store and says,

hey, do you carry this directory? Okay, thanks. And

you, they always say, well, I can order it for you. Oh, that's okay. I'll try another

store. Right. So. And then you hang up. And maybe

you don't do it every day, but like. Like, one store would get called, like once

a week. They'd be getting a call. It took about two and a half,

three months, until we got, literally got a call from the buyer,

said, we need to get your books. I was like, great, I'd love to

help.

>> Richard: Well, you know, I would say that back

then. That's amazing. It certainly has changed.

>> Jeniffer: Go.

>> Richard: You can quite do that today. but what's also

funny is that a lot of those publishing programs from 30

years ago were're doing books that

have since sort of evolved out of that

market. I feel like every day I'm looking at books that

were published, 20 years ago that would never be

published today because content delivery has

changed so much. And there's so many different ways to bring

your concepts to the market and so many different

ways to, I mean, I mean, just go to

how to nonfiction books. Everybody goes on to YouTube

and watches videos of how to do things. Now they don't need books

anymore. So it's strange how

much this has changed and how we reminisce about the days

when things were literally slow enough that you had to

call, and follow it down a spreadsheet in order to get your books

placed in stores.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, yeah.

>> Richard: and similarly, I remember when I was in book sales,

I, was given a copy of Crane's

business Chicago, and had to go call,

call every business listed in one issue of

the magazine to try to sell books, our books at that

time.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, yeah.

>> Richard: So, yeah, that's how we did ite same exact thing. That's how

you do it. and I feel for a

lot of the authors and publishers who were out there today trying, trying

to do the same thing, because now that I've been working on the

other side for so long, I know what the sort of

accepted lies that Barnes and noble

uses to be able to like, tell authors

like, this is not the way. Go do it some other way. You

know, nobody ever wants to directly say to an author

that they may not be interested in their book because their book is their

baby. Yeah, of course's right. But there are, there

is obviously, is. There are obviously protocols that need to be

followed. And I think that's where my,

my movement into distribution really helped me. He

was learning that piece of it, because

sides. Yeah, I've been on both sides. and

I still maintain that having that experience

on both sides is what has made me good at what I

do.

>> Jeniffer: Absolutely.

You know what I like about you, Richard? And actually, I'll say there's a lot

of things I love about you, but one of is that you really have a lot of

compassion for authors. And so Richard and I

really met at IBPA's publishing university,

which happens once a year and it's been happening

for 40 years

or longer. So IBPA is Independent

Book Publishers Association. And Richard,

you're always willing to give people advice. Like, you may

not be able to take on their book, but you do it with compassion and you

get back to people and you, you tell them why and

what they can do to make their books better.

>> Richard: I do, and I really appreciate your acknowledgment that I do

that because I do have this sort of innate

sympathy for the process. and

plus I've seen what happens when it works.

And I think that to be able to guide

people the right direction and not waste their

time and be able to give them good, valuable

feedback is one of the best things I can do to help

somebody. And, you know, I think in some small

way we all want to be able to help other

people in some way. And this is way I

can do.

>> Jeniffer: It and be better. And you, absolutely. And I remember

one time you were giving advice to someone small publisher,

children's books, maybe four books on the market,

and you looked at each one and you were like, do you want my

honest opinion? He said, yeah, I want it. And you just told him

this, this, this, and this are, you know, four things that

are going to keep you from getting, you know, selling your book, let alone

getting distribution. And I remember his face just fell. It just

got kind of flat. And he looked really sad. And you felt so guilty.

Later we were at dinner and you're like, oh my God, I shouldn't have told him those things.

And then the next day he emailed you and said, thank you so much

for taking the Time to be honest with me and tell me,

you know, how I can do better, how I can get better. Because

he wants to compete and his books are great.

It just those little things that hold, hold us back

from getting where we want to be.

>> Richard: Yeah, I agree with you there. And, I

remember that exact

experience. I will say that, not

everybody takes it as well. True.

>> Jeniffer: ye.

>> Richard: You know, I mean, again, there is some truth to the

fact that if you are a publisher and you are

publishing your own content, you might almost

be too close to it sometimes

because that criticism is real.

And I think that being able to make those

adjustments and get a little creative distance between you and your

baby is always good for business.

And some people know that. Some people have to learn that

the hard way. I generally try to be gentle about

it. but, you know, I think, I think it's

worth hearing.

>> Jeniffer: I agree.

What do you, what would you say, like, the top three mistakes that you

see, like new small publishing houses make?

>> Richard: Oh, this is very, very easy to answer.

The top one, number one by far is

publishing into a category where

the publisher doesn't really seem to be aware

of what the

market can sustain. And so

what I mean by that is let's use children's

booksus. That's probably the best example.

Know, children's books are really, when

you're talking about picture books, they're really kind of divided

into two basic categories. You've got the

sort of the preschool books where it's like ages

three to five who are learning words. You think about

Dr. Seuss and concepts and things like that. And then

you have actual storytelling from ages 5

to 7 where kids can follow along with a

character and read some more sophisticated

language. And more

often than not, out in the wild, I see children's books

where it hasn't really been considered how

old the child is going to be and what the reading

level is supposed to be. So

without knowing that children's needs to be clearly

delineated, like 3 to 5 or 5 to 7,

and that the language needs to match that age,

that's a huge piece of it. so

it's knowing that the book is written

for that market, but also it has to be packaged for

that market. And one of the other biggest

things that I see is a book that might be

well written and well illustrated, but the page

count is too high and the price is

inevitably too high and it's just not going to

be competitive in the market. now I do say this, Jennifer.

Knowing that most of My recent experience in

particular is sort of

angled towards the mainstream trade. And there are a

lot of ways to sell books other than through the

mainstream trade. But my eyes, I tend to look at things

through that perception.

>> Jeniffer: So talk about what those other ways might be.

>> Richard: Oh, well, I mean, I think a lot of. Okay,

so that's a big question that I don't think I would

need to actually kind of have something written up to be able to hit all the

right points. But, once upon a time

I felt like being in distribution. I felt

like giving an author or a publisher

the opportunity to have their book distributed was

the number one way to kind of

gain some clout and break yourself away from the rest

of the pack. And I don't think that's

necessarily the case anymore. I think distribution can

do that and will do that for certain kinds

of books. But I also think that,

today with, the digital

realm being the primary way to market things, and

so much social media and so much, sort

of instant gratification on the part of

consumers, there's a lot of ways that you can put your product

out there that kind of steps around

the trade market. Altog togetherute m

and I think you understand more than anybody probably

that, you know, a lot of it is about being

able to build your brand

online, to be able to put your name out there

and your product out there in association with everything that

you're doing so that you will be more

discoverable and, you know, have more

success.

>> Jeniffer: Absolutely.

I often tell my authors one of the worst place

to sell books is bookstores. And they just look at

me like I'm crazy. But the thing is, like, there's only so much

bookshelf space. And what

was it? I think this number is accurate. Around

3.5 million books were published in

2022 was the last time I got.

>> Richard: Isn't that crazy? I remember when it was

50,000.

>> Jeniffer: Me too.

>> Richard: Right. And then it just started exponentially

growing. And every time I would try to cite, a figure, I would double

check it. Dou been like, yeah, double.

Yeah, it was half a million and then it was 1 million.

And, you know, and, not all of those books are going to be relevant to

every market. And that's the other thing that I think that I

definitely would say, in terms of, you know, when you

were asking about what those missps are

or those misconceptions is that not

every book is going to sell into every

market. And, and most of the time, I think when

somebody is bringing a book to the market, they're

anticipating that e there'going to be all these

broad sales potential

efforts. And instead it's, I feel

like nowadays, especially with what, 3.5 million books being

published annually, you've got to know what

that target market should be. And it might just

be one very small piece of the market, but

if you can find that audience and sell

to that audience, then you're going to have the

success that you need. And so it could be

a regional audience, it could be a particular category

audience. You know, I have publishers or have known publishers

who only sell on Amazon

and only sell science fiction books, you

know, like very specific things because they know that

readership is there and that's going to do what they want

for their books. So, I would

say that the advice there would be to

not necessarily look at your book as something

that has to be sold in every store because it's not

going to be. But maybe if there's

a certain tier of stores or a certain

market segment that you want to target. Yeah,

yeah. Then that's the way to go.

>> Chad: Well, we've got these, there's riches in the niches.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, yeah. Well, we've got like

these lovely bookstores around San Diego that are

really gift shops with books. And I feel like

that's such a great place to get certain books into.

And, and we have a client right now who

is publishing car books. So it's

very niche. And he really has no

intention of getting into distribution, you know, traditional

distribution per se, because he goes direct to his

audience through his authors. So he might have an author who

has, you know, 1.5 million followers

on TikTok or whatever platform he's on.

And then all he has to do is get, you know, 3% of those

people to, want to pre order his book and it's paid for itself

and it's working. They want the

content.

>> Chad: So you, as long as you're into a

very specific type of car, it's not just like

cars.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, yeah. Well, he understands his audience.

He really understands the niche. You know, to your

point earlier, Richard, he's not. I think a lot of

times, you know, we're passionate about something and we tell this

story and it is our baby. But

who's the audience? Who are we trying to target? And that's

really the formula that makes

publishing successful. And it's really hard for an

author to do that because, you know, I call it your sacred cow. There's all these

things that are really important to you but mean nothing to your audience and

you're trying to shoehorn that into your marketing plan

and no one gets it.

>> Richard: Well, I think this is where the role of a publisher

differs from that of an author often is that,

you know, the author is very good at, being able to put the creative

package together and be able to get the thing

out there. But you also need to have somebody

who can make those hard decisions about where it

will not sell and what the target market should

be. And I think that's where a publisher's

forte really comes into play.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, absolutely.

Well, okay, so we sort of skipped past the main

question that some of our listeners might be asking, which is

what is distribution? So talk.

>> Richard: It's a really. Yeah, yeah, really good question. I.

And that it's hard to completely understand and it

changes constantly. But the main

easy way to understand it is,

distribution is sort of opening the

floodgates to the supply chain.

So think of it this way. If you

are, an author and you've published your own book and

you want to get it out there, you can

start from your basement or your living room

or your car or wherever you are, and

you can make that effort and that cost

to try to get books everywhere they need to be.

but if you suddenly have

an opportunity to market yourself, that's going to

really, really, really bring about a lot of

deep interest in the book that you've produced. you're not

going to be able to work fast enough or cheaply enough to make it cost

effective for most people. And so distribution

is about opening the doors so

that when that demand is there,

people can get the book.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, definitely. Well said. And I have a

great example of that. We had a client who wrote a book, this

might have been 20 years ago, and he got on

Oprah and guess what?

He didn't have the distribution and people couldn't find this book. And that

wave, you know, is, is a short,

short lived wave, you know, and once it crashes, it's done.

People aren't going to come back and be like, oh, what was that book again? I really

wanted two weeks ago, it's too late.

>> Richard: That's right, it is. And you know, and I think that

sometimes when authors are trying to

sell themselves and they're trying to get opportunities and

they're filling out the form and talking about their book.

One of the things that is asked is whether or not you have distribution.

And the reason for that is, and you know,

like the trade magazines that do reviews and so forth, they will

ask These questions too because they do not want to

give important real estate and marketing muscle

to something that is not going to be available.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Richard: And so if you're an

author and you see that question on some form that asks if you

have distribution, the reason why you need an

answer there is so that they will know that your book

is going to be available. It doesn't necessarily have to be

IPG or some other established

distributor, but it has to be a way into the

market.

>> Jeniffer: Yah.

>> Richard: And so that's, that's what distribution is and that's

what it does is it opens up that supply chain and it

tells the rest of the industry that your product is

going to be available when the consumers want it.

>> Jeniffer: Right. Yeah. Oh, I like that. It's a good pull quote.

M well, okay, so now let's talk about the difference between

traditional distribution and wholesale distribution.

>> Richard: Okay, I can do that. That's pretty easy actually. so

wholesale is primarily built

as a tier of the industry that supports the retailer.

So if you're a bookshop and you ``n to get books from every

single publisher that's out there, as most bookshops

do, then you go to a wholesaler because they'll

carry everything and that allows them to

do one stop shop where they can get their books

replenished. They have one line of credit where they can pay

the monthly bill to continue to have their orders

shipped. whereas

distribution is more

about making the publishers books

available to those wholesalers and to those

retail. So again the wholesaler is really

a benefit for the

retailer whereas a distributor is the benefit for

the publisher.

>> Jeniffer: M I always kind of bench

it like this. The wholesaler is really a list of all

books that you have access to.

>> Richard: Correct.

>> Jeniffer: And distribution is an active, you know, someone

actively trying to get those books into bookstores and

a relationship with book buyers.

>> Richard: Well, and y have distribution is usually a

curated list too. So instead of it being

again wholesale works in such a way that you

they will pretty much carry anything. They don't have those

kinds of. They have quantity decisions made but not

necessarily content decisions. If there is

need for a book in the market, they can store it,

they can ship it to retailers. whereas a

distributor, because they are really trying

to sell product into the market, they're

going to curate their list based on what

looks sellable and what is

backed by real marketing power,

and real author activity.

>> Jeniffer: One of the things that people need to think about

is distribution isn't

necessarily the holy grail. And I've

called You in the past and told you about a small publisher, you know, who have

these great books, and you've kind of explained to me why they're

not ready. And it has to do with

not just marketing and demand, but, but

also backlist and return. So can you kind of explain to

us how that works and what you look for when you make

a decision on who you want to bring into the

family?

>> Richard: sure, yeah. I think that the main thing

with most publishers is that when they get

started, they think the distribution is going to be kind of

the big step, that they need to have that sales

power and the extra revenue coming in.

And whereas that's sort of true, I don't

think everyone understands the

financial complexities of it. I'm

gonna use an example. I think one of the last times I talked

to you, it was specifically about a

one book publisher. And in the

distribution model, because books are returnable by

definition, if we take on a one

book publisher and we do everything we can

possibly do to sell the book, to help market it

to the industry, to help kind of support the

author's activities in social media, everything

that's going to kind of raise the profile of the book,

and we even push it out there and get it stored everywhere. And then

for some reason and this, lots can happen

to any book. It just doesn't sell through it. Just for

whatever reason, it just doesn't appeal to the market in

general. Or there's some. Those books are

returnable, they come back. They end

up in such a model that we

have, booked sales for several

months and then six months later,

they all come back as returns. And in

that model you've got

a publisher and an author,

most likely different

person, but sometimes the same, who are

waiting for that revenue. And the problem in a

distribution model is if you're not releasing more books and you

don't have steady, releases one after the

another, you can't keep that cash flow on the

positive side because you eventually get to a point

where the sales drop off and the returns are on the

ascent and eventually the returns will take

over. You'll end up with all these negative

months. And that's not an ideal relationship

for either distributor or publisher.

>> Jeniffer: Right, right.

And how long do bookstores have to return books?

Is that indefinite?

>> Richard: Well, yes, I think that

it's not indefinite. Most of the time there

are policies in place that say something like, hey, you

have, you know, six months from the time that you've bought the

book to return the book. But the, the

small Secret is that if the book is actively

selling and, it's still in print,

you know, somebody can. This is where wholesalers

come in. Wholesalers don't really care. So you

can buy a book and return it to the wholesaler,

and that book is gonna go right back to the publisher or

the distributor. And that could be

nine months after the book is sold. That could be a year and a half after

the book is sold. we actually had an experience

lately where Ingram must have

stumbled across a supply of books that had

been sitting in a warehouse for several years, and

they returned a lot of them all at once, Even though several of those

books hadn't really been sold to Ingram in almost just as

long. And because of the

separate sort of agreements that you have with the

vendors, that can happen.

>> Jeniffer: That's like the kiss of death. It is, yeah. I knew

an author who got a deal with Costco.

Not an author, a small publisher. Sure. I need to

speak more correctly here. So,

you know, 50,000 books were printed and shipped,

and 30,000 books were shipped back.

And, you know, for a small publisher, that that s.

Can put you under. And it did.

>> Richard: Yes. And in a distribution model, what happens

there is, let's say we sell those 50,000

books, you know, three months down the road, that

publisher is expecting to get paid for all of

those books that have been sold. But. But we can

tell by all of the tools that we have, in

order to monitor books out in the market, we can tell

when things are not selling through. And

in cases like that, where they don't have new books coming to

generate new revenue, you have to build the

financial model so that we don't end

up paying a publisher for sales that are

just going to come right back. And

in that case, if we paid them for 50,000

books selling through and then 30,000 of them came

back, we'd end up in a situation where we'have to claw money

back from the publisher. And that's very, very difficult. It's

very difficult because a publisher usually needs that money and has

invested so much of their life and time into putting this

book out in the market that they've probably already

spent it by the time that those returns come back. So that's

why the model doesn't really work in distribution. When you're

talking about a one book.

>> Jeniffer: Publisher, it sounds bleak, if I'm

honest.

>> Richard: Well, when you mention. Well,

it is kind of bleak in that sense. I think

what you want to be able to do is you want to be able to

pitch the book as hey, I can get it out into

the M market. And because of all the activity that I'm

doing and all of the continued

investment in my marketing and promotion of myself,

I'm going to continue to force people to send, go

into their stores and buy the book and that sell through will

happen.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah. You know, and then so like the

relationship with new titles and back title is really

important. Right.

>> Richard: Well, so yeah, you asked about Backlist before and the reason

why, we would ideally

prefer to be able to distribute a publisher who

has an active backlist is for that very point

you want to have that steady sort of,

regular sales. And that's what Backlist really is, is the books that

you introduced in the past that have continued to sell, even if

they're slow moving, continuing to sell, continuing to

bring in that revenue for you, because that healthy

revenue from your Backlist, which should be the back lone bone

of any publishing program, is what allows you

to make those risks of putting new frontless books out

and sending 50,000 books out into the market without

knowing if the 30,000 are gonna come back because you have that

steady paycheck of the backlist sales as well.

>> Jeniffer: Right.

And this is where, you know, I like to pipe in about

author branding is it's so important

to have that relationship with your readers and

to, you know, to continue to keep that

communication and that engagement with them.

Because I like to say the number one thing that sells your first

book is your third book. You know, as you are building

and developing that relationship and your brand is getting more

visibility, people go back and buy that first book

even though they've discovered your third book.

>> Richard: Yeah. I would say there is nothing actually more

important than, you know, kind of an

author working on that brand and making sure

that they are going to keep that fan

base. I mean that is crucial. A few minutes ago I mentioned

that distribution used to be a way to kind of give your book

the clout that it would need in order to sell.

And I would say now it's far more important that

you have the, the sort of, the self branding

backup to be able to get out there and win over an audience. It's,

it's just, it's crucial. And that is one of the things that's going toa

set your book apart more than, I mean,

almost more than whether or not you have the right distributor.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah. And that's why I'm in the business of selling authors,

not books.

>> Richard: Right. And I understand why you

are.

>> Jeniffer: You know, I said it's bleak but you said something in the

beginning that actually is kind of exciting. And, you know,

things have changed dramatically in

the past 20 years. And one of those things is, in

fact, different ways to deliver content. Whether it's a YouTube

video or an audiobook or an ebook

or whatever format you're delivering

your content, it's really the same thing. It's

a form of storytelling. And I think for

authors and small publishers to think outside the box of

that traditional model is really important.

Do you see, like, a certain type of

content that, you know, just as a distributor that

you look at bringing into the fold of how you do

business?

>> Richard: Wow, that's a, that's a big question. I would say that

there are a couple of answers there. It's not really based

on content in the sense that, you know,

we think that investing in, you know,

a program that is publishing fiction is going to be

therefore, somehow more valuable than one that sells

nonfiction. In fact, usually it's the opposite. There are

other, business aspects we have to look at as a distributor who

has a physical warehouse, who needs to be able

to make everything as cost effective as possible. You

know, I've had conversations with publishers,

really good publishers with really strong publishing programs

that are oriented towards kids audiences,

where the retail prices on the books are

all unanimously pretty low.

And what that means is that

if you, your retail price points

are super low, then when you put all the

factors into it as what the distribution

is going to cost, how much it costs your distributor to

touch each book when they're pulling them from m the pile and putting them in

a box or on a shipment, all of those aspects of

it kind of factor in, and

it's more cost effective for a distributor to work with books

that have higher price points and that move in greater quantities.

You know, it's ideal for any distributor

to ship boxes of books rather than in

individual books. And that is what individual

independent publishers really have to struggle with, is

the fact that it is less cost effective for

the entire traditional book system to

touch their book.

>> Jeniffer: And having all these different formats requires them

reaching into different, you know, audience, you know,

marketing efforts and finding different types of readers

and different places. And that all becomes very, very

time consuming. But go ahead.

>> Richard: Yeah. I do think having a partnership with a

distributor or a marketer or somebody who can

help is crucial because

those partners will be able to help you

market, multiple formats without kind of duplicating

your efforts.

>> Jeniffer: Okay. Okay. So that's good news.

>> Richard: Yes.

>> Jeniffer: And, and I think that,

you know, however, People find our content again.

We're building relationships so that they want to continue

to buy whatever that, that new product is or that

new way in which you're distributing.

your thoughts? I guess I'm

sort of off base here and maybe I'm in deep

water with you because I know your business is selling

print books. Do you distribute ebooks?

>> Richard: Oh, absolutely.

>> Jeniffer: O. You do?

>> Richard: Yeah, no, no, we do. And in fact we

have, we have ve invested a lot in our ebook business

because we learned pretty early on that

the, again, I think that the primary

way to market is in the digital realm.

Whether you're talking about print books or ebooks,

you mark it in the digital realm. And there's no better

way to market in the digital realm than to have

an ebook available. Your ebook being there

and being listed everywhere and being findable in every search

engine and so forth is what's going to make

that print book sale happen.

>> Richard: So we felt that it made more

sense when you're talking about content in multiple formats,

it makes more sense for your distributor to handle

all of those formats together. Because,

you know, any marketing you do on one edition should

theoretically help propel the sales of another.

>> Jeniffer: Ah, absolutely. Well, good. Okay, that was m.

That was sort of where I was headed is like, does it scare you that there's all those

formats but you're embracing it and you need to. That's how we

stay. Stay the game.

>> Richard: You have to. Ah, yeah. The only part that we have

struggled with, and it's not a big problem, is

that sometimes there are books. And I would

say in the children's world, the educational world especially,

there are books that translate their content into

apps rather than ebooks. And

so if somebody wants to do some kind of

interactive app, they can

develop that independently, but it doesn't get the benefit of being

marketed by a distributor.

>> Jeniffer: Interesting. Yeah, because then the distributor is.

Well, like Apple for example. Right.

>> Richard: Exact. Well, right. I mean we can do marketing on Apple

for, for their ebook product, but not

for the apps that they sell on the iPhones. You think

that' probably, no,

probably not.

>> Chad: Not with Apple.

>> Richard: No. I think that things that sell in the digital

spaces, I think that they become

kind of more and more self service. And

I think that where you'renna find with

somebody working directly with Apple is that there are going to be fewer

people like me who can help a

publisher consult, who can actually use real

life experience and say, yeah, do that, don't do that.

You know, they instead they're going to Let kind of leave it up to you

to make decisions. I mean, that's what Amazon is really famous for, is

for these really great programs that anybody

can access, but then how to use them to the

best of your ability and, maximize your sales

potential, that's not something that everybody just

inherently knows. That's something you have to learn.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Richard: And so I feel like a distributor still

offers, you know, people who have

professionally done these things long enough that they can help

advise. So no matter how many systems are out there that

are easy or difficult to use, you're

actually getting real life sort of guidance in terms

of how best to do it.

>> Jeniffer: When I think about print books, I think

back at the time when I was working in the music industry,

I worked for Sam Goody, Music Land. And I remember one day we had

to ship up, box up all of our

vinyl and ship it back. And I thought to

myself, really, that's it, Vinyl'done we're just like, we re.

We're done with vinyl. And I think sometimes people

look at the print books, you know, in the print book

industry, like that is like, are we going to be done with books?

I personally don't see that happening, despite the

fact that I heard an article recently that

in 2024 we had the

fewest number of people reading print

books, physical books. That

for some reason doesn't scare me. And I always think back to vinyl.

And now vinyl is like the hottest thing, right? It's back.

Everyone wants vinyl. And I really just never seen

print books go away. And I'm curious what your thinking

is on this. And I happen to know, and we might as well just tell

everyone, Richard has this massive,

amazing collection of vinyl. So

you could be like the expert on vinyl in this conversation

too.

>> Richard: Well, I hate some you this, but I have a pretty significant

collection of books as well.

>> Chad: I'm shocked, Shocked, I tell you.

>> Richard: but yeah, to answer that easy question for you,

do I think books are going to go away? No, because I think what

makes books appealing is

the tactile facets of them. Right. Like

the fact that you can be in a room and you can go over and you can kind of page

through and see information without directly searching

for that specific piece of information. I think it's a way

people learn. I think it's a, that certain personality types are always

going to learn. there might be certain kinds of content

that stop being available in print books, but I do

think there's always going to be some level of print. I

also think that the generation changing over will

redefine that. you know, the generation

that's kind of in charge is still sort of that,

you know, I would say the baby boomer to Gen

X generation that sort of built the

book industry into what it is. And the ones that have been

suffering the most have been those people who've seen the

changes. But as new generations come

up, I, I think millennials were probably

the first generation to really have to, embrace

ebooks. And I think that the next generation after

that has had a world where they necessarily have had

to read physical books because ebooks have been available.

But let's just take the kids market. Know,

no matter how much goodwill is put behind the idea

of making a really great interactive children's picture

book, kids don't respond to it the same way.

And we have found that the children's picture book market

can continues to flourish. You know, it just, it

hasn't translated directly to digital quite the same

way that, you know, adult textbooks have.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, yeah, that's a great example. And our brain

like, learns differently when we, when we use

a pen to write versus writing on a

keyboard. When we read something physically,

it's a different process in our brain that I think

is important to remember. Not that I'm a neurologist or a

brain scientist in any way, but, I personally,

when I need to remember something, if I write it down with a pen,

I will remember it.

>> Richard: And that is, that is, that is your, that is your

method of learning.

>> Jeniffer: Like, that is my experience.

>> Richard: Yeah, that's inherent to who you are. And I think

that you cannot expect that future

generations are all going to learn and absorb

information the same way.

>> Jeniffer: That's true. And you know, when I came up in a time when we didn't have computers

and we were told to take notes. So, yeah, that's how my brain

works. But I do think that there's a different experience with

the content when you're seeing it on the page

and, and reading it and flipping pages. That

tactile experience that you mentioned before,

there's something really beautiful about it. Novel.

>> Richard: Well, that's what happened with vinyl too,

as. Right. The music world went digital and

like, we were all weaned into it by cds, which of, of

course generated digital music from the

product. But once you pulled them off of a

physical product, you lost something. There was

an interaction between the

listener and the music that

was manifested by its, artwork

and just holding that thing in your hand and reading

those lyrics and the thank you notes or Whatever it

is that made it a tactile experience.

whereas I think the reason why vinyl came back is

because a. It wasn't a digital format. So

therefore you wasn't asking people to invest in

something that was already, you know.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Richard: On the market. and then also, it's

just. It's a beautiful way to take that content and present it

to people. And I think the answer there is that some books

are just beautiful books. And the more

beautiful a book, the more you're always going to have an audience for

it.

>> Chad: See, I have a far more dystopian view on

things.

>> Jeniffer: Of course you do.

>> Chad: I think, in a world where tech

giants rule and can take away

things at the drop of a hat, I'm looking at the U2

album in particular that was delivered to

everybody that had an Apple device.

No one really wanted it. It just showed up one day in

Apple Music.

>> Richard: I.

>> Chad: They were able to take it away. And they do this with, with ebooks all

the time. If they decide that we don't want you to

have this, we will take it, we're done with

it. We're not allowing it on our platform anymore.

So if you have a physical book, that thing

still exists. There's still. Same with,

with vinyl. I remember when I had to get rid

of. I didn't have to get rid of. I was just, you

know, a transient teenager who, you

know, didn't have any means or place to store his

viny. So it's like, you know, things get

left places and I don't

know. And then I had to do the transition

from vinyl to through

tape onto disc. And it's like I have

purchased this same damn album three times. Three times

now.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah.

>> Chad: I wish I just had the vinyl.

>> Richard: You knowpt s interesting. Well, Chad, it's

interesting first of all, you know, because all it really takes is for your cat to get a

little too close to that record and suddenly it's rendered completely

useless.

But the other thing is that, when you're talking

about ebooks and you're talking about the sort of. The

permanence of them, that has been a very

contested topic for a long time.

Libraries in particular, who are all

about building collections that can be used by their m.

Their sort of constituency, libraries have been

shifting into an ebook model. And then what

good is it for a library if you've got this addition

of something in your cloud collection

that just disappears because the publisher or

distributor determines that this is not something they want you to have

anymore? so there's an organization

called dpla. It's the Digital Public Libraries of America. They

have an initiative to sell

ebooks to accounts in a

way that allows them to keep that

format for the rest of

existence. And the goal of that, there are a

lot of different sort of specific reasons for

it, but the goal is because we can't anticipate the

changes in technology. And so whereas right

now most ebooks are sold in a reflowable EP

and they might be on ePub, I don't know, 3.0

or 5.0 or 8 point, I don't know what number it is. But

at some point, because of changes in hardware and changes

in technology, there is going to be a need to

maybe abandon the EPUB format and

instead deliver content in this other way. And suddenly a

library has to repurchase all of the content

that they have spent all of their budgets for how many years,

you know, acquiring. Now there's a way

that they, they can buy content,

that they will be able to access that

content when they need to repurpose it for a new

format. And some publishers don't want that because it

gives library access to what is effectively their

ip. So, for example, ipg,

we have a relationship where we are selling

ebooks into this DPLA initiative,

but we give our publishers the opportunity to opt

out of it.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, interest_ing yeah.

>> Richard: But it's interesting. It shows that people are thinking

about that. And there are a lot of vendors who want

to preserve the collections that they buy in a digital

format. And they do that, in numerous

ways. And this is one of them.

>> Jeniffer: Right, right.

So I want to go back to your cat ruining your

vinyl.

>> Richard: Oh, yes.

>> Jeniffer: How is Alice?

>> Richard: Well, she sleeps on the stereo, so

she's grown to really love the music.

>> Chad: All those transformers are warm.

>> Jeniffer: Yeah, they are.

>> Richard: Those transformers are warm.

>> Jeniffer: I remember the story of how Alice got her name. I was hoping you would

tell our listeners about Alice. Alice

is Richard's cat.

>> Richard: Well, so just to be clear, we have a

cat and we have a dog.

>> Jeniffer: We don't want people thinking you're just a cat person.

>> Richard: We'll. The segue there is that I'm

pretty sure that our doggie daycare person is

redelivering my dog to me upstairs, like

in just a minute or two. So I wanted to kind of

give you the heads up. but terms in

terms of Alice, you know, she's fantastic.

We got her from a rescue, a very well known rescue here in

Chicago called Felines and Canines. If anybody in

Chicago was listening and is willing to rescue, an animal they

have cats to and dogs. And it's a great, great place. You can go to

this house and kind of hang out with all the animals and let them

pick you. Alice picked us. we did not go there to get

Alice. And I sat down and she climbed on top of me, and

she ended up falling asleep in my lap.

And the idea of leaving there at that point without

her was unfathomable. So that.

But she got her name because we got her home. And I did not

do that thing that as. As a pet owner for

decades, I know the drill. And when you're

introducing a cat to a new house, you're supposed to do it piece by

piece because they are curious. They will investigate,

but they also will get overwhelmed, and you have to kind

of familiarize themselves and mark their territory

and do all those things. And I just brought her

home and opened it up in the big room, of my apartment and

kind of let her just go. And she ended up

finding a hole behind our H vac

where it was like a hole in the

wall. And she went in there and didn't come out for about

14 hours.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

>> Richard: And. And. And it was scary because we were

all excited about getting this new kitten. And then this

happened, and we didn't know if she was going to get stuck or if she's

gonna fall through the. Or end up coming out in somebody else's

apartment, you know, through the. Through the light fixture. Like,

you just never know. But yet there was enough

evidence that she was just kind of hanging out in there. Like, you

would see her eyes sometimes

that we didn't get super alarmed. But it

was because she fell back into that hole behind her H

vac that it was like Alice falling in the hole, the

rabbit hole down to Wonderland. And

therefore, she became Alice, which is.

>> Jeniffer: A great way to end this podcast on

a literary note, Alice the cat.

Richard, thank you so much for spending an hour with

us and just, you know, talking about books and distribution.

And I just really appreciate it. Thank you.

>> Richard: You're very welcome. I appreciate being asked.

And hopefully I will be the best and

most successful_ful, episode of season

six.

>> Jeniffer: Oh, you absolutely will. And then

there'll be a prize. We won't tell you what it is till you win it.

Awesome.

Folks, Richard Williams again is the vice president

of IPG and business

business development at IPG. And you can learn more about

IPG@ipgbook.com.

this has been another episode of the Premise. You

can visit us

online@theemisepod.com and

subscribe and rate or review the Premise wherever

you get your podcasts. Those reviews really help us get the word

out and increase our subscriber base. We appreciate

you. And, you can follow me

on Instagram @jennifergrace or on

Facebook at Jennifer Thompson Consulting.

Until next time. Thanks for listening.

Goodbye.

>> Chad: Goodbye, Goodbye.