Seven years ago, seismic changes in the industry compelled Independent Publishers Group to expand its business from book distribution to printing. Clark Matthews, IPG’s vice president and general manager of book manufacturing and warehousing services, says that the company’s publisher clients were looking to minimize risk. “A growing number of clients were finding that protecting their publishing house meant printing quantities closer to true demand,” he says.
Publishers wanted print runs that were smaller, more frequent, and inexpensive– with ultra-fast turnaround times and zero shipping costs. “That’s something only an in-house printing program can provide,” Matthews says.
The last remaining full-service independent book distributor in North America, IPG provides sales, marketing, manufacturing, warehousing, and fulfillment for several hundred high-quality independent publishers, in all print and digital formats. With its deep roots in book distribution, IPG focuses on ensuring that its clients’ books are selling through every possible sales channel—neighborhood bookstores, airport kiosks, museum gift shops, and so forth. IPG also provides major representation at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other industry heavy hitters. In addition, IPG owns and operates Triumph Books and Chicago Review Press, making it uniquely attuned to the needs of independent publishers.
One of the biggest challenges for smaller independent presses is printing the correct number of books to fulfil orders, and many publishers have moved their entire backlist, and even some of their frontlist, to exclusively short-run digital printing models. “The problem is many still haven’t quite been able to get the formula right,” Matthews says. “I see many cases where a book that was slated for small-batch digital printing saw an unexpected surge in volume. The publisher can get stuck. They might need thousands of books printed in just a few days’ time, or risk losing that big Amazon order. In these cases, printing costs can be unacceptably high.”
On the flip side, publishers don’t want to bet too big. “We still have too many cases where a big offset run leaves a publisher’s profit margin buried under pallets of unsold books,” Matthews says.
IPG’s printing service has been reconfigured to mitigate those risks, with equipment that is capable of the usual smallbatch digital print runs as well as new cutting-edge printing equipment from HP, Inc., Harris & Bruno, and Magnum that enables IPG to scale up quickly with pricing that is not punitive. IPG also offers an inexpensive, in-house chop and rebind service, for cases when an overstocked hardcover edition might be profitably repurposed into a paperback. The company sources paper stocks certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), including partially recycled paper stocks, and is currently undergoing FSC certification.
While other book manufacturers might be newcomers to areas like digital publishing and fulfillment services, IPG began there. Warehousing, sales and marketing, e-book distribution, metadata delivery solutions, ordering management systems, and supply chain and logistics have been the company’s bedrock business for more than 50 years.
“In an increasingly convoluted world, we are situated to give our publishers good advice,” Matthews says. “As digital sophistication becomes key to a profitable path forward for publishers, we think we are situated better than ever to provide that advice.”
