"Our sales are way up, well into the double digits," said Mark Suchomel, president of Chicago-based Independent Publishers Group, the third largest distributor, after Publishers Group West and National Book Network. He credits several titles, including Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by Bernard-Henri Lévy (Melville House) and The Knitting Experience, Book 2: The Purl Stitch by Sally Melville (XRX), which has been the top-selling craft title on Nielsen's BookScan for the past few weeks, with spurring IPG's growth. Other fall/winter titles that are advancing nicely include Denise I. McClean and Nicole P. Gotlin's Backstreet Mom, which has Oprah and Good Morning America appearances lined up, and Lucius Shepard's Two Trains Running (Golden Gryphon Press, Mar.).
Suchomel bristles at the notion that IPG's success in a down economy marks a triumph for small presses, given the number that comprise its list. "People have to forget that it's a small publisher," he said. "I don't think the industry in general understands the impact a good distributor can give. It doesn't matter the size of the publisher. The sell-through is going to be the same. We can certainly sell 100,000 copies of a book, but we can't do it in two months." Among the books that have hit that mark are Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle (Chicago Review Press) and 1-2-3 Magic by Thomas W. Phelan (Child Management).
