My Experience with IBPA’s Publishing University 2010—Day One

by Dane Batty

Editor's note: NWABP is a regional affiliate of the Independent Book Publishers Association. Each year IBPA puts on Publishing University, which immediately precedes Book Expo America, the nation's largest book trade show. IBPA awards two scholarships to each of its 24 affiliates. Dane was one of this year's scholarship winners. Dane also received a stipend from NWABP to help defray his expenses to New York City to addend IBPA's premier educational event.

I am a new publisher, otherwise labeled as a self-publisher, but I like to call myself a micro-publisher. It has a better connotation to it! As the 2010 Publishing University (Pub U) date approached I was nearing my first book release, which would take place just a month afterward. So I was excited to hear that I was awarded a scholarship by IBPA and NWABP, and I felt I could really put it to good use.

I am a business professional (from another industry) with two dreams: to write a book and to own my own business. When I completed my book, I had a chance to own my own business, so with little market research I moved forward and didn’t look back. With a business background, my weak areas are understanding the barriers to the book industry and marketing my book, and these areas drove my choices for classes at Pub U.

Pub U was full of statistics, including sales figures, books produced, how much inventory Barnes & Noble and Borders borrow from publishers, and expectations of the e-book revolution. I didn’t want to report figures; rather I wanted to report about my experience—how it helped my confidence in preparing my book launch and in learning how to bring future authors into my new business. Oh yeah—I also wanted to learn how to sell the darn thing! What I soon realized was that I didn’t need Pub U this year; I needed it lastyear. Knowing that knowledge never expires, however, I thank both IBPA and NWABP for giving me this opportunity.

The experience was priceless. It was quick and intense, and it was my first trip to the Big Apple so it was exciting as well. I have been to other East Coast cities, but New York was just as busy as I have seen it in the movies. I cannot see how people live in such density, but I can see why industries, including the publishing industry, enjoy the closeness and ability for so many people to meet face-to-face. Apparently, it was the only way to flourish pre-Internet, and it will probably always be an advantage for business in general. I also visited Wall Street and got a taste of an important industry tightly packaged in a few physical blocks, another example of how approximation of an industry seemingly works.

Inside, the famous Roosevelt Hotel was similar to its outside surroundings: people everywhere and not one sign to help a visitor. It literally seemed like a foreign country. I arrived a bit late because had I commuted from Harlem into the city. My trip was made possible not only because of the scholarship but also because a family member who lives in Harlem offered me a place to stay for the week. It was a true gift, not just for the grand I saved on hotels, but also because it forced me to see much of Manhattan, including parts of the island I probably would have otherwise avoided. For four days I jumped on the Number 1 subway and got off at Central Park, Times Square, or farther south, and I took two of the four days to tour most of Manhattan on foot. The Roosevelt was centrally located to my travels, so after a couple of days in the city I walked into the hotel, ready to learn.

Our first session was a university-wide introduction in the hotel’s ballroom given by Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks. Her publishing company is in Chicago and is the largest woman-owned book publisher in the country. Sourcebooks sells physical books and tickets to events, and they bundle their books, giving themselves three revenue streams. Raccah dished out a lot of industry facts and notable quotes, but her biggest point was that her company doesn’t publish books; they publish authors. In fact, this was a common theme even among my fellow scholarship peers. Leonard Flachman, one of my new friends who owns a small-book publishing company that has a dozen titles, told me the same thing. In fact, when evaluating a new author to publish, and assuming it is a good book, he will ask the author for his or her personal Christmas card list. Case in point: He had a well-to-do young lady who wanted Leonard to publish her book, and when she sent him her list she was immediately accepted. Not only did she have a good book and a good personality, but she had 5,000 people in her network who would buy a copy! I had never heard of this approach, but I will never forget it.

Raccah also felt that being connected was extremely important, especially author connectivity. Authors need to connect with consumers, and now that they have realized this fact, they can use technology to reach out far easier than before. She also spoke of e-books, but so much of Pub U was focused on e-books that this introduction section seemed to be published-book focused in comparison. She seemed to be successful in traditional book publishing and is trying to embrace the e-book revolution, which seems inevitable.

From the introduction we sat in on another Pub U-wide forum called Beyond the Book. It included a panel of book futurists helping to forecast where the book industry is headed by explaining its own contribution. The main topic was indeed e-books, but it also included a new topic called enhanced e-books. An enhanced e-book is more like a website that displays, for example, videos and where the reader can interact with the content The professional mediator seemed as if he were a host straight from an OPB talk show with his polished approach and Disney-approved voice. The panel was well done, informative, and well prepared.

Mark Coker of Smashwords, whom my e-book is distributed through, described not only his process of converting print to electronic but also his nontraditional book publishing approach. He explained why he thought e-books will change the industry. Since e-books are electronic, book sellers aren’t the only ones who sell books; books can be sold anywhere and everywhere on the Internet. Everyone with a Web site can sell books. He’s finding that the e-book market is growing faster than the process, and it’s apparent even in his conversion process and distribution. With my own book there are big opportunities to sell in many formats, but the conversion process still seems quite new because my different formats seem to have different formatting errors in the end products. The quality of the product does not yet equal the opportunities to sell the product, but the lack of quality in the product doesn’t seem to be slowing the potential for sales. In fact, the production doesn’t seem to be keeping up with the demand, if you can sell products with different quality levels. Although the statistics being given to us show that e-books are on the heels of print, it seems e-books could be or will be doing better in a short time. I got my first look at an e-book this year on both Kindle and Epub versions, and they are really cool. They won’t take the place of p-books for me, but they will have their place for sure.

Enhanced books look interesting although they don’t relate to me yet. They seem to have the appearance of a Web site and read like an e-book, but they don’t include any advertising, which is neat. They include hyperlinks to the Web and videos imbedded in the text, and they interact with the reader well.

Sara Nelson, from O Magazine,was also on the panel. Sara thinks that new technology can create new readers, but O Magazine still looks for good narrative no matter the format. She also believes that e-books are this generation’s mass market books, and e-books will only make the p-book more valuable.

With my book being released one month after Pub U, I had committed to using the nontraditional print-on-demand method of distributing my book. I chose this method because the indicators led me away from the traditional model and because I don’t ever do anything the normal way anyway. The traditional path seemed expensive, labor intensive, and stale. So walking into my next class that talked about book publicity, I soon realized it was not for me. This speakers included three book publicists and marketing reps for publishers. I didn’t learn many new tricks and was a little disappointed since the class was formatted mainly for the traditional model of book publishing. They did mention that the e-book and print-on-demand marketing is almost all online. Since I’m not in bookstores there are no book signings, and the publicity class featured ways of organizing signings and appearances, not necessarily marketing of products to online end users. (They did have some good hard candies on the table, however.)

Day One of Pub U concluded with the Benjamin Franklin Independent Book Awards. This was my first awards show. It was just like a mini-Hollywood version, only without the fancy dresses, red carpet, and beautiful people! I ended up enjoying the awards more than I had anticipated, and it made me realize that there are some really cool and professionally published books that come out of independent presses.

To be continued . . . .

Dane Batty is the owner of Nish Publishing Company. His first release is the independently published Wanted: Gentleman Bank Robber: The True Story of Leslie Ibsen Rogge, One of the FBI’s Most Elusive Criminals.