on about books delve into the

latest news about. the publishing industry with interesting interviews with publishing experts. we'll also give you updates on current nonfiction authors and books. the latest book reviews, and we'll talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span book tv tv. and now joining us is andrea fleck nisbet, who is ceo of a group called the independent book association, which is what ms. fleck nesbit. good morning, and thank you for having on. so the independent book publisher association is

nonprofit association of about 3500 independent publishers located primarily in the united states. we do have some global members as well and our members are really a diverse group. so they range in size, size, background publishing program. we serve everyone from author publishers. to me just be starting out publishing their own all the way through large established independent publishers. so is an independent publisher, you know, that is such a great question, peter, and everyone defines it a little bit differently and actually we do have a document if anyone's interested in reviewing the detail of it on the ipa website, we have a document that goes into the detail of how we divide out different types of publishers so an independent publisher versus for example a corporate publisher. and in the united states, there are five major corporate trade

publishers and it's anyone who is not a corporate publisher or, a university press, which would be to a university, a higher educational institution. so what this includes self. that's a really great question. well, we folks do define it that way. we so at ipa about a third of our members are, author publishers and those individuals who are working with other people to create own book and put it out into the market place. they are not publishing works. so an independent publisher is someone who is actively acquiring content from an author or developing a themselves and then hiring an to write that content. then they put the package together and distribute it out into the marketplace. so that's the differentiation. as an author, publisher is

someone who's producing their own, along with experts, we're helping them and an independent publisher is someone who is acquiring the work of author. so andrea fleck-nisbet, you and i decided to create a so-called independent publishing company. what would be the steps we would take? so the first up, i always tell everyone when they're starting out to creating an independent publisher, just like any small business is to create a mission statement. so why are you creating this organization? who are you hoping to reach? what type of content are you looking to put out in the world? and then to create a really strong and detailed financial statement? so you want to put together that panel at the beginning the process so you really understand what kind of funds, resources you're going to need upfront. and then how are you planning to get those books to the market and what is the costs going to be associated with that?

and there are a lot of different moving parts that are part of a panel for a book publisher. you have to look at acquiring the content producing the content, distributing the content. so it's really important for folks as they're looking to put a business together to have that business plan in place to know who they're trying to reach and to have their finances is really shored up as they're looking launch something. so if somebody writes a book, how do they get it into the marketplace? is it automatically available on amazon? no it's not automatically available on amazon. there are many different ways that you can actually get your book into the marketplace. so again, the first thing you need to determine is who is your reader? where are they shopping and where are they congregating? either online and in person. and then you can start to put together the plan of how you're going get your book in front of them and where they're actually going to purchase that book.

typically, if it's an author, publisher or they are going to put their book together and then either they can post it directly to amazon then once they have purchased called an isbn, which is an identifier number that we in the publishing use to identify unique book. so they can upload the book directly to to amazon through a program called kindle direct or this is typically what we recommend. they can use a platform like sparc or lulu press or a platform that will allow them to post that book with the files and all of the metadata that surrounds that file. and then the file gets transmitted to amazon and noble. all of the trading part of the online trading partners that would allow the book to be visible. then once online and a consumer can purchase it, the consumer,

that book. and then on back end the book actually gets produced. so in that particular model, the book is not getting printed until a consumer purchases it. and that's something that we call print on demand. and the technology and the software out there for publishing a book advanced quite a bit in the last ten years hasn't absolutely. so we always say at ibp that it's never been easier to create a book and put the book into marketplace and it's never been harder to sell book because to your point about the technology suddenly making it much easier and more accessible well for any individual to a book to create own work and put it out into the marketplace. we've seen a proliferation of books come onto the market, so the number of self-pay or author published books that are now available on the marketplace, these have gone up around 500% in the past decade.

so that's a huge number of titles that are suddenly out into the market. now, how many self-published or independent books written and published year. you know, that's a really hard statistic to to get a bead on because there's an organization that called broker where folks go to purchase their isbn and so the only way that we can track that information is by the number of isbn ads that are out into the market. but not all those isbn is necessarily get used and something to know about the publishing industry is that we don't actually have a lot of good data around how many books are sold every single year because we don't have one clear system for tracking every single transaction. so i actually couldn't give you number of how many author published books are produced. we don't have a lot of accurate data there to tell us exactly

how are in the market. can you go back to the isbn, the international standard business? our book number and its importance? so and isbn is critical to. a book being able to be discovered and purchased out in the world without an isbn unless you're selling a directly through your own website or your hand selling a book at events, for example, you can actually sell a book through amazon. barnes any trade retail without an isbn and one thing we always remind our author publishers and our new starting out is that it's critical for the author publisher to own their own isbn. so when you set a book through kindle direct publishing, for example, there is an option to get a free isbn through them. but you never want to do that because. the isbn then doesn't belong to

you and you can't take that isbn else. so as author publisher we always recommend you go directly through our we actually have a discount through our membership where our publishers can get a discount off of purchasing isbn. but it's really critical that if you want to put your book up for sale in any retail space, you have to purchase an isbn. now andrea fleck-nisbet, before forming the independent book publishers association, you have a background in corporate, correct? yes is correct. and actually, i will say i did not form the independent book publishers. so i've been here for about two years. but the organization actually founded by a woman named, jann nathan, in 1983. so we have been around for a long time. we just celebrated 40th anniversary last year and the organization has grown quite significantly in those four decades. i myself have been working in

the publishing for a little over 20 years, so i spent the first 15 years at one of the largest independent publisher at the time in the united states working in publishing. and then from there i worked at ingram content group, which is a wholesaler distributor and technology company that is really critical our industry. and then i at harpercollins, which is one of those big corporate publishers where i ran a start up imprint for three years called harper horizon. and then after that i decided i really wanted to be working with independent publishers. this is there's a lot of growth in our industry. so it's been a really fun and educational time working here at ibp. well, what some of the frustrations that chan mason had 40 years ago when she founded the organization and of the frustrations maybe you had in corporate publishing. sure. that's a really good question. certainly the industry become

quite a bit more complex the past 40 years. so members facing unique challenges now that they didn't have to face then but one of the through lines from over the past four decades is that in-depth publishers simply do not have the same resources corporate publishers do so a corporate publisher has either publicly traded by harpercollins example is owned by news corp or there's a set of investors that are investing in that corporate publisher with an publisher. you have to think of it as a small business. oftentimes it's a family business. and so the having the resource to be able to compete with corporate publishers can be really challenging for those indie publishers. and also just being able to access the market. and that's become even more complex. so when john nathan founded ibp in 1983, the goal, it was really

around marketing, trade, marketing and fueling the resource of indie publishers into one organized nation and one entity, and to leverage the shared value and the shared strength of those independent publishers together. we still do that. we offer a lot of trade marketing, but it's actually become more challenging for to be discovered and to convert to sale than it was 40 years ago, simply because there are many books on the market. so does the independent publishers association offer marketing and editing help for first time authors or independent authors. so we always like to we are an association that supports the business of publishing, not the craft publishing. and so what we mean by that, if an individual is looking for help around editing the

production process, we do some of that. but really our focus is once the book is created and the author, publisher or the independent publishers looking to get that book into the market. we provide services and education on how to do that. so it's really about the business of of book publishing in terms of what we as an organization. it's certainly marketing trade marketing programs, discounts on services that. folks who service our industry provide, but it's also about education advocacy. and those are two really mission. things that we do at ibp. so by education, i mean is teaching author publishers teaching more established publishers the best way to get their in front of people the most profitable to run their business and sort of how to protect that are themselves and their businesses against either

bad actors in the industry or against services that may not actually be profitable for them. so that's the educational. and then in terms of advocacy, we actually have an advocacy committee that works with other associates like the american association of publishers to work things like a book banning or or e-book legislation, which may hinder a publisher's rights. so not only we providing those marketing services, but also providing education and advocacy as well. can you give us a couple of example urls of some of your members, maybe some of the success stories that has had? yeah. so one of the things that we like to say is that in the if ibp is doing our job correctly an association, then members are going to grow up of us, which means that they may into the

organization and limited knowledge about how the industry works and in using our tools and, our systems and educating themselves and as an organization, you know, when we advocate for them, they should be able grow their business over time. and one good example of that, we also have an awards program which was just rebranded to it was called the ben franklin awards and we rebranded it to the ibp book awards. and that's a big part of what we as well. we have one publishing member there called kim cat books and. kim cat was started in 2019 by one woman who had a passion reading and wanted to get books into the world. and in a very short period of time, sue has managed to grow her business into a very successful and profitable independent publishing business. so she went from being very

small and just starting out and not having a lot of information. she didn't have a background in publishing to our most winning publisher part of our awards program. so just one example of how when member enters our ecosystem, they take advantage of the services and education. they can grow their business time andrea fleck-nisbet the beginning of this interview, you said that you don't use the term self-publish. why not we don't use that term because no one can publish a book on their own, right? so there can write a book and they can put it out into the market. but we like to say to our author publishers, if no one would pay you to do this activity, you shouldn't do it yourself by you mean, if no one's going to pay you to design a book cover, then you need to find an expert the market to design that cover for because you want to create the most professional polished book that you possibly can.

you spent all time writing and working on it and you want to get it out to world. and to do that you really need to surround yourself with a team of experts and that's something else that we do it. ibp is to help guide people through the different types, experts that they're going to need in to professionally publish a book. we also have a checklist online for publishers who are just starting, who may not know all of the different steps and all the different details of what a professional published book is. so we have an industry standards checklist people can go through to make sure that their book includes all of the different needed in order to make that professionally published. we in publishing overlook importance of distribution. don't wait. we do. we. and it's a confusing term. distribution can mean different things to different folks depending on how using it in context. could you explain that a little bit more? sure, i'd be happy to.

so the active distributor i of it like little d versus big d distribution. so to distribute a book to put it out the market in a way that is discoverable to the end user. and one of the things we also like to see it say at ibp is that a publisher should make sure that their book is available in every format, in every market that a reader may want to that title. so we do talk a lot about accessibility and our association as well. and so that level of distribution can mean posting the book on amazon on selling the book through your own website, right? posting the book on a platform like ingram sparc, which will then distribute your book into the market. but that's really passive and that's just about available in the market. that's not about sales or driving. barnes noble or another retailer to actually discover your book and pick it up and say, yes, i want to put on my bookshelf.

so big d distribute action is when an independent publisher is picked up by a distributor or a large corporate publisher that does distribution. so simon and schuster, england random house. mcmillan hachette, all of those corporate publishers distribute other small publishers. and when they do that, not only they bring the data for that book into, their systems, they bring the books into warehouses and they a sales team that is actively selling those titles. so that's the difference between small d passive distribution and, big d, full sales or active distribution? what's your on the impact of i on publishing? right. so this is a very topic. i just came from the us book show, which was yesterday and it was first thing that we discuss at the book show and i've actually on in a couple of times

at conferences in the past few months, there's a lot of fear. there always is when technology evolves and essentially what this is, this is an evolution of technology. you know, it's a rapidly evolving. so there are two different pieces of it. one is generative, ai that's when l looms or large language models are being taught essentially to output based on material. and concern for publishers from a copyright perspective of is that they're copyright advantage either their book the content, their books are being put these plans to train them and then the output is potentially a book that is competitive with the original titles. so the concern is from a copyright perspective but then also a competition perspective. and there is real concern there. that is a valid concern. it's something that at ibp, again from a legislative

perspective, we work with organizations like the authors guild and ap to learn how we can help protect our members rights and, how we can help our members educate themselves. on the flip side of that are the tools, resources that new ai technol judges allow that can actually help our members with efficiencies in their businesses and economies of scale. so we started this conversation. we were about how challenging it is for independent publishers to compete with corporate publishers while new a.i. technologies, whether it's in marketing or helping to write copy, can actually aid independent to be able to run their businesses more effectively. and so that's where we think i can potentially benefit members. but the most important thing for ibp is that we continue educate our members both on concerns around artificial intelligence, but also on the benefits andrea fleck-nisbet is the executive

officer of the india book publishers association and we appreciate your spending a few minutes with us here on book tv.