Conference Wrap Up Part 6 – IBPA Pub U

In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we have attended the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit. We look forward to Publishers Weekly’s U.S. Book Show next!

Read all of our 2023 spring conference wrap ups:

Katie Versluis and Kristina Radke at IBPA Pub U

Independent Book Publishers Association Publishing University

Independent Book Publishers Association’s (IBPA) Publishing University is a vibrant gathering aimed at traditional and hybrid independent publishers, as well as author publishers, who gather to exchange knowledge, resources, strategies, solutions, and more. This year, the IBPA celebrated its 40th anniversary on Coronado Island in San Diego, with their nautical theme—”Navigate, Innovate, Elevate: Charting the Next 40 Years”.

In addition to the many conversations we had with the IBPA members at our table, and at our “Ask the Experts” sessions (where members sign up to speak to specific industry experts one-on one), the keynote programming was especially powerful this year. Friday’s keynote, “The Future is Independent – How Indie Publishers are Transforming the Industry” featured Rebekah “Bex” Borucki, founder of Row House Publishing, and Arthur Levine, founder of Levine Querido. Each of them shared their journey to founding their publishing houses, including challenges and wins. There was a lot of discussion about finding your community, filling a niche that larger publishers may not be focused on, and uplifting innovated voices. Both of the panelists emphasized that independent publishers have the books with this kind of targeted focus, which distributors may be missing from other large publishers. In many cases, getting a meeting with a distributor may be as simple writing an email to them.

Saturday’s keynote, “Legends of Black Independent Publishing: Learning from the Best”, was a wealth of knowledge. The panelists, Dr. Haki Madhubuti (Third World Press), W. Paul Coates (Black Classic Press),
Kassahun Checole (Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press), and Wade and Cheryl Hudson
(Just Us Books), and hosted by Troy Johnson (African American Literature Book Club), mentioned that they had about a hundred years of experience combined. Much of the focus of this panel was on the power of community—uplifting one another, coming together in support when, for example, an entire basement full of books is flooded, and unapologetically serving the needs of readers in their communities. From acquiring, to editing, to printing and distributing, these powerhouses of indie publishing shared their experiences and strategies with a roomful of rapt IBPA members.

Karen Pavlicin, founder of Elva Resa Publishing and IBPA Board Chair, and NetGalley’s Kristina Radke.

In addition to the amazing keynotes, panels, and conversations, the IBPA also celebrated NetGalley’s own VP of Business Growth, Kristina Radke, who has now completed two terms on the IBPA Board of Directors. Congratulations, Kristina!

Conference Wrap Up Part 5 – Festival des Livres Paris

In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we—along with our Firebrand Group colleagues—look forward to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit, and Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show. Scroll to the end of this article to set up a meeting with our teams!

Read all of our spring conference wrap ups:

Maria Bodmer and Prudence Servan at the Paris Book Festival

Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival)

The Paris Book Festival (previously “Salon du Livre”) is designed to attract both professionals in the book publishing industry, as well as a general audience of book lovers. The festival celebrates literature and literary trends. For publishers, this is an opportunity to represent their authors as they participate in readings or interviews on various stages across the event, to network with colleagues across the industry, and meet directly with their audience.

Since this event is extremely busy for the publishers who attend, we took this opportunity to quickly connect with our clients. We were excited to hear positive feedback to recent updates we’ve made to NetGalley, including support for larger file sizes and the Profile Walkthrough to help NetGalley members update the details about how and where they promote books. Publishers were quick to tell us that they’d like our help launching debut authors, more resources to explain NetGalley to their authors, and even key points to help them bring more of their teams up to speed with the opportunities that NetGalley provides in terms of digital distribution, data, and book promotions. We can’t wait to dive in!

Number of publishers we sat down with: 11

Thank you to the nearly 60 publishers we’ve met with at these spring conferences! It’s always a pleasure to speak with the passionate members of our client community, and we’ve been inspired by our conversations.

Read our next installment, covering the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University!

Find us here in May:

May 5-6: IBPA Publishing University
- Meet with Kristina Radke (VP of Business Growth & Engagement) and Katie Versluis (Customer Success Manager), NetGalley
- concierge [at] netgalley.com
May 9-10: ECPA Leadership Summit
- Meet with Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Education, Firebrand Technologies
- info [at] firebrandtech.com
May 23-25: Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show
- We are thrilled to sponsor this event. Find us at the NetGalley Pub Hub!

Conference Wrap Up Part 4 – Leipziger Buchmesse

In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we—along with our Firebrand Group colleagues—look forward to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit, and Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show. Scroll to the end of this article to set up a meeting with our teams!

Read all of our spring conference wrap ups:

Karlotta Lehnert and Karina Elm at the Leipzig Book Fair

Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair)

Leipzig Book Fair is one of Germany’s two famous book fairs with century-long tradition. While the bigger, more international one in Frankfurt is known as the industry event, Leipzig is the fair for the public. And after a three year break due to the pandemic, the public was clearly very keen to return: A record-breaking 274,000 visitors came to browse the newest books, meet their favorite authors, listen to interviews and discussions on one of the many stages (on the fairground and all over town), or to just connect with other book lovers. That’s not to say that the industry does not meet in Leipzig as well. 2,000 exhibitors from 40 countries attended to present their books, authors and book-related products. Since face-to-face meetings have been greatly missed, we took the chance to connect with some of our clients, partners and interested publishers.

Besides giving a quick update on the growth of our member community and its constantly rising activity, the main point of those short meetings was to listen to our clients’ needs and valuable feedback, to start strategizing for upcoming titles, and to answer questions. We discussed industry trends, such as the ongoing growth for the audiobook format, which is a rising source of income for most publishers.

One trend that was very noticeable in Leipzig is the growing importance of Manga and Manga readers for the book industry. The Manga-Comic-Con happens every year at the same time and at the same location as the book fair, and thousands of people attend dressed as their favorite characters. We’ve heard from a few publishers who will enter that market in the upcoming months and have high expectations.

Topics that frequently came up were rising costs for printed ARCs, budget cuts, thoughts about sustainability, and how much more important NetGalley has become for publishers due to these changes. Even publishers who have been using NetGalley for years are seeing even more added value in the platform.

We also heard positive feedback regarding our latest feature updates: The Profile Walkthrough has led to significantly more meaningful member profiles, and the notes that publishers can add to members’ profiles help to create an easy, consistent workflow when several employees are managing requests.

Another takeaway from the fair: Our clients strongly prefer in-person presentations over an email or a PDF file—which is why we do follow-up training calls with publishers who have further questions and/or changing workflows or staff. And why, throughout all meetings, we solidified the idea of presenting the results of our currently-running member survey in a webinar for all publishers to attend.

We’re looking forward to these follow-up meetings and to seeing everyone again in Frankfurt in October!

Number of publishers we met with: 23

Read our next installment, covering the Festival des Livres Paris!

Find us here in May:

May 5-6: IBPA Publishing University
- Meet with Kristina Radke (VP of Business Growth & Engagement) and Katie Versluis (Customer Success Manager), NetGalley
- concierge [at] netgalley.com
May 9-10: ECPA Leadership Summit
- Meet with Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Education, Firebrand Technologies
- info [at] firebrandtech.com
May 23-25: Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show
- We are thrilled to sponsor this event. Find us at the NetGalley Pub Hub!

Conference Wrap Up Part 3 – BISG Annual Meeting

In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we—along with our Firebrand Group colleagues—look forward to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit, and Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show. Scroll to the end of this article to set up a meeting with our teams!

Read all of our 2023 spring conference wrap ups:

Paul Milana, Joshua Tallent, Angela Bole, Kristina Radke, and Mary Pratt at the BISG Annual Meeting

Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Annual Meeting:

It’s impossible to avoid news about supply chain disruption, increased costs across the industry, and another digital transformation. As always, BISG kept its thumb on the pulse of the book business, leaning into the theme, “Transforming Supply Chain Communication.”

Sessions were solutions oriented, and focused on the positive questions: What can we do better? What should we do next?

Gary Jones from River Rock Advisors presented a forecasting model that helps publishers and printers determine print quantities based on marketplace demand, the time required to supply printed books, as well as inventory management and returns. That presentation was followed by a discussion on changes that are needed in the data part of the supply chain (and not just the continuing need for the adoption of ONIX 3). Kris Kliemann, chair of the BISG Rights Committee, brought up the importance of rights data and how difficult it can be for publishers to know what rights they own. She said, “Rights you know about are an asset, rights you don’t are a liability.” The discussion also touched on making data more accessible to more people, the importance of keywords, and the benefit of publishers developing a data dictionary to define their terms clearly.

The last panel discussion of the day included an interesting presentation by Lauren Stewart at BookNet Canada about how that organization has centralized much of the metadata and other publishing support processes in Canada, and provides a central, clean repository of metadata for trading partners. As with the other panels, the discussion was lively and some great ideas were addressed.

After lunch, Angela Bole, CEO of Firebrand Group, presented the Industry Champion Award to Phil Madans (Executive Director of Digital Publishing Technology, Hachette Book Group). This award honors an individual whose efforts have advanced the publishing industry as a whole. BISG wrote, “The idea that technology should empower, not hinder, the publishing process has been Phil’s north star since creating HBG’s first intranet over 25 years ago.” Congratulations, Phil!

Last, but not least, Joshua Tallent (Director of Sales & Education at Firebrand Technologies) was named as the incoming BISG Board Chair, with responsibilities beginning July 1, 2023. Congratulations, Joshua!

For a deeper dive into the issue of supply chain management, we highly recommend this article by BISG Executive Director Brian O’Leary in Publishers Weekly.

Read our next installment, covering the Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair).

Find us here in May:

May 5-6: IBPA Publishing University
- Meet with Kristina Radke (VP of Business Growth & Engagement) and Katie Versluis (Customer Success Manager), NetGalley
- concierge [at] netgalley.com
May 9-10: ECPA Leadership Summit
- Meet with Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Education, Firebrand Technologies
- info [at] firebrandtech.com
May 23-25: Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show
- We are thrilled to sponsor this event. Find us at the NetGalley Pub Hub!

Conference Wrap Up, Part 2 – London Book Fair

In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we—along with our Firebrand Group colleagues—look forward to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit, and Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show. Scroll to the end of this article to set up a meeting with our teams!

Read Part 1 of our Conference Wrap Up here, covering APAC.

NetGalley and other Firebrand Group team members at the London Book Fiar

London Book Fair (LBF):

London Book Fair may be known for its International Rights Centre, but it’s safe to say that the whole conference was buzzing with energy, from the Sustainability Lounge to the Technology Theatre (which was just a few feet away from our booth). The Fair was busier than in 2022, with a generally positive outlook and mood among attendees.

It was exciting to hear about our clients’ efforts to engage with new and diverse audiences. Influencer campaigns were at the top of the list, with publishers sharing more about the ways they are identifying influencers who would make good partners. We heard about influencer databases some marketers are tapping into, as well as a more manual approach via active engagement in the social media spaces where these influencers live. Publishers are leaning into more social engagement using CTAs that drive to their social channels, and are creating and incorporating more media (audio and video) that plugs nicely into these platforms.

At a high level, we had conversations about tracking the full customer journey. Identifying where a reader is first engaged, and following them through the path to purchase is a top priority for the heads of marketing and communications across many of the large publishers. As we learned in the “Role of Technology in Publishing” session, data is the bedrock of publishing today. NetGalley’s data, especially for pre-pub titles, continues to be an important part of that journey—from initial discovery to request, from download to review, and even pre-order or buy now.**

The panelists emphasized the importance of gathering, analyzing, and using data, while pointing out the need to make that data available to all divisions and departments. But making it available isn’t enough—they stressed that it is equally important to help teams develop a better understanding of how data can be used to maximize effective strategies. We’re always happy to talk about data, so let us know if you’d like to hear more about your NetGalley reports.

The panel also discussed the potential opportunities and risks of AI in publishing, including optimizing content for specific audiences, proof-reading, fact-checking, translation, and even cross-referencing international rights. Some of the publishers we spoke to told us of their recent experiments with AI, testing its limits to write marketing copy, or even whole books, with an eye to understanding its limitations. In all cases, they felt secure that AI is not coming for anyone’s jobs (yet).

Number of publishers we sat down with during LBF: 14

**Here’s more information about NetGalley Reporting and Data.

Read our next installment, covering the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Annual Meeting!

Find us here in May:

May 5-6: IBPA Publishing University
- Meet with Kristina Radke (VP of Business Growth & Engagement) and Katie Versluis (Customer Success Manager), NetGalley
- concierge [at] netgalley.com

May 9-10: ECPA Leadership Summit
- Meet with Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Education, Firebrand Technologies
- info [at] firebrandtech.com

May 23-25: Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show
- We are thrilled to sponsor this event. Find us at the NetGalley Pub Hub!

Conference Wrap Up, Part 1 – APAC

Conference season is in full swing in a way we haven’t seen since 2019! It’s been rejuvenating to reconnect with so many of our colleagues and partners in the industry over coffee, tea, and/or something a little stronger. Post-show happy hours haven’t gone anywhere, and we’re glad to toast the return of the trade shows.

In March and April, the NetGalley team attended the Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC), London Book Fair, Festival des Livres Paris (Paris Book Festival), Leipziger Buchmesse (Leipzig Book Fair), and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) annual meeting. This month (May), we—along with our Firebrand Group colleagues—look forward to the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Publishing University, Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Leadership Summit, and Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show. Scroll to the end of this article to set up a meeting with our teams!

What we learned in April

In general, AI was the hot topic in sessions across the industry. As with the evolution of digital-reading, publishers are viewing AI with eyes wide open to the threats that it could present, while also acknowledging the potential for it to revolutionize our work. Conversations on how to protect authors’ rights, address copyright for works generated by AI, and ensure that human creativity sits at the forefront of book creation are side-by-side with excitement to tap into AI’s potential to reduce tedious work and create more opportunities for that creativity to thrive.

Audio Publishers Association Conference (APAC):

The Audio Publishers Association offers publishers and narrators an amazing opportunity to network, learn from industry experts in the audio space, and share insights and resources. For NetGalley, this event was a welcome chance to hear directly from our clients who are using NetGalley to promote audiobooks.

Publishers told us that they are thrilled to use NetGalley to expand their reach into new communities, and/or offer the audio format to booksellers and librarians who are using audio to more quickly power through their TBR list. Others emphasized they are looking to reach more traditional media contacts. In the “Meet the Press” session, Tom Beer (Editor-in-Chief, Kirkus Reviews) acknowledged that they have been accepting digital formats for review since 2020, including via widgets from NetGalley.* According to Beer, the audiobook format is relatively new to Kirkus. Each month their audio contributors write a column, centered on a theme, that incorporates three audiobook titles. These columns are less “book review” and more focused on the given topic, and how the audio format augments the story.

All of the panelists (Kirkus, Audiofile Magazine, and Audible) agreed that additional media assets are very welcome from publishers. A photo from the studio, a carefully chosen sound byte, interview with the author (or between the author and the narrator) are all dynamic and interesting assets they may use outside of a review. They’re always looking for content to share, so the more you provide the more likely it is they will share it widely! Audio excerpts in NetGalley are also a great way to generate interest in a title, adding them to either the digital or audio format.

Publishers confirmed audiobook workflows continue to be challenging. Many of the clients we spoke with have small teams who are managing everything from production to marketing. They are driving conversations internally at their companies about how to streamline their efforts to finalize files earlier, test AI voices without threatening narrators, deliver content to the right early audiences, and continue to champion the audiobook format. If you’re having similar internal conversations and would like to talk more about how NetGalley can help you achieve any of these goals, please reach out. We’re happy to provide data or case studies, and share strategies we’ve seen work.

Number of publishers we sat down with during APAC: 11

*The NetGalley widget is an auto-approved link that can be used to invite media and journalists to access a book right away. Here’s more information about the NetGalley widget.

Thank you to the nearly 60 publishers we’ve met with at these conferences! It’s always a pleasure to speak with the passionate members of our client community, and we’ve been inspired by our conversations.

Read our next installment, covering the London Book Fair!

Find us here in May:

May 5-6: IBPA Publishing University
- Meet with Kristina Radke (VP of Business Growth & Engagement) and Katie Versluis (Customer Success Manager), NetGalley
- concierge [at] netgalley.com

May 9-10: ECPA Leadership Summit
- Meet with Joshua Tallent, Director of Sales and Education, Firebrand Technologies
- info [at] firebrandtech.com

May 23-25: Publishers Weekly U.S. Book Show
- We are thrilled to sponsor this event. Find us at the NetGalley Pub Hub!