The Independent Publishers Group recently announced it was creating a special program for Christian houses that are among its 200 distribution clients. PW talked with CEO Joe Matthews about IPG's recent addition of four houses that it will begin to distribute this summer: Our Daily Bread with books that focus on Bible engagement; Scepter Publishers with titles aimed at guidance for Christian living; Iron Hill, which focuses on youth ministry resources and Bibles; and Global Publishing Partners, a boutique house that will bring IPG its first opportunity to distribute a Bible.

Why create a new program now?

We've had various types of religious publishers—Catholic, Christian, Jewish interest— and we serve them fairly well. But through our involvement now with the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association we have seen a growing interest among more of them to join IPG. Now, I am able to build a complete vertical program around Christian publishing with these signings. Our Daily Bread is a huge and vital organization in the Christian space, very well-known and respected. Scepter is a juggernaut in the Catholic space, with really significant sales of great books.

Your announcement mentioned plans for a showcase event for Christian publishers to connect directly with buyers and booksellers. What else will the new program offer them?

There are still about 1,000 Christian bookstores out there, so IPG is going to be hiring specialized sales people, including a dedicated rep, to cover those stores aggressively and create a Christian Edelweiss catalog to market the list. I've also hired an extremely knowledgeable consultant in the Christian space to help me build out and flesh out this program so we can educate our whole staff and get better at tuning into the needs of Christian publishers. There's e-book platforms like Faithlife that have marketing opportunities and newsletters and things that publishers can get involved with. Specialty wholesalers like Christian book distributors have various marketing programs we can get involved with. There are co-op opportunities with Parable Group (producer of biannual Christian Product Expo events) and IPG buying power can get better deals for advertising.

At the end of the day, IPG is an alliance of independent publishers that together can act like a big one. So as an alliance in the Christian space, we can get great rates, great opportunities. IPG is the last truly independent, full-service book distributor in North America. We have the warehouses, the technology, the sales, and B-to-B marketing for these publishers. I believe I'm going to greatly increase the size of this program in the coming years because the need is there now.

Where else do you see opportunities for growth?

All the tribes of publishing are coming together instead of fragmenting into the various worlds they used to live in. Look at what's happening in the academic space. Academic bookstores are closing and not doing well. Academic publishers are publishing more and more books that cross over into the book trade. We now see more opportunities to be one central solution for academic publishers. The same is true for graphic novel publishers. With the bankruptcy of Diamond Comic IPG is going to pivot and focus more on direct-to-comic-bookshop sales, because all these comic book publishers are going to start talking to IPG.

IPG came off a tough year in 2023 and you describe 2024 as a return to normal. What are the challenges you face now?

We always need to grow because of the pressures on our margins. The list price of books does not keep up with inflation, so I constantly have to become more efficient. I have some new competitive threats; Simon and Schuster is becoming a lot more aggressive about book distribution and dipping into smaller-sized publishers that in the past they weren't interested in.

I could say that maybe we're doomed as the last independent distributor, but I think being the last man standing is really cool. I talk to publishers about how we're not owned by private equity and venture capitalists. We're not reporting to some board of directors that couldn't care less about publishing and books and authors. I still believe that independent publishing is vital for our society, for our culture.