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BISG Annual Meeting 2024

workflow

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

On Friday, April 12th, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) once again graciously hosted their annual meeting in-person at New York City’s Harvard Club — as well as via an online stream for attendees not able to join for the day.  BISG is one of the premier US trade associations in the publishing industry, whose work is carried out through a small staff along with the volunteer efforts of professionals from every segment of publishing. I’m active on the Workflow Committee for BISG and I, along with Nicole Tomassi, Westchester’s Marketing & Conference Manager, joined a number of our colleagues from that esteemed group at a table for the day’s events.

Presentation slide with four circles labeled Inclusion, Research, Standards, and Education, connected by arrows

Versa Press’ Matt Kennell got the day started by introducing a panel consisting of outgoing BISG board director and CEO of IBPA Andrea Fleck-Nisbet, James Miller of Barnes & Noble, and Joshua Tallent from Firebrand Technologies. The panel examined the approach of embracing a Virtuous Circle of Inclusion → Research → Standards → and Education, a theme which echoed across the day’s panels. The discussion touched upon the past Trends publication from BISG, the dozens of webinars and events that are supported each year via BISG’s staff of 2 full-time employees, and the efforts of volunteers on their committees, as well as how BISG continues to work closely with companies throughout the industry to curate virtual and in-person events exploring topics ranging from sustainability to metadata to workflow to rights to subject codes, and more. Lastly, the panel zeroed in on the primary goals for BISG to achieve during the next three years, including:

1. Transforming supply chain communication
2. BISG at 50 (which happens in 2026)
3. Resource development
4. Membership growth
5. Membership retention

The balance of the day saw sessions including:
  • “The Case for Royalty Statement Standards”, moderated by Kris Kliemann from Kliemann and Company, outlining the need for standards on royalty statements in the industry. Panelists included Jennifer Weltz (President, Association of American Literary Agents; President, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency Inc.), Lucina Schell (International Rights Manager at University of Chicago Press), and Donna Laing (VP of Royalties and Rights Data Management at Scholastic). For those of us not involved in rights, this was a fantastic education on the challenges with administering rights and royalties with so many segments of the industry reporting back on sales and returns in different formats and with different expectations.
  • Ken Brooks (Amplify Education) moderated the session, “Moving Out of the Tower of Babel: Improving Efficiencies Across the Supply Chain”, featuring speakers Claire Holloway (Manager of Publisher Relations, OCLC), Alan DuBose (Senior VP of Planning & Data Analytics, Books-A-Million), and Jessica Wells (Penguin Random House). The supply chain is a topic a bit more ubiquitous than rights across the industry as we each have a role to play in it regardless of our vocation, and the exploration of issues related to forecasting, leveraging actionable data within different systems in our tech stacks, and identifying shared pain points put this topic into a shared frame of reference for all involved that spurred further discussions at the reception following the meeting. With the absence of one point of data in the US, as Booknet Canada supports within the Canadian market, there are ongoing challenges we’ll be working through with the help of organizations like BISG.  An example query that a unified data set could help answer for market research and planning was “How many copies of The Great Gatsby were sold across all publishers after it went public domain?” Having access to that type of unified data would help publishers make better decisions on whether to expand or adjust plans for certain titles in their public domain editions lists, for instance.  Everyone walked away from this session with a list to think about specific to their portion of a book’s life cycle.
  • Connie Harbison (Baker & Taylor) conducted a “How Standards for Product Metadata Reflect Shifts in Culture” panel discussion with Geraldine Zephirin (Barnes & Noble), Michael Olenick (Clarivate), and Gina Wachtel (Penguin Random House) that looked at the need for standards, and leveraging BISAC Codes more effectively, as well as mapping them to Thema for international markets. The prior interim speech, “Metadata in Action: Understanding Industry Trends” by David Walter of Circana helped illustrate the picture of why clear, consistent metadata is important for helping ensure discoverability and industry tracking that benefits us all.  The panel’s emphasis on the practical – including hygiene tasks for clearing out outdated BISAC codes from your ONIX feed and metadata – made what can be an arcane topic accessible for those of us in the room who may not have a favorite BISAC code (as each panelist shared they did!).
Man speaking from podium at lower left hand corner of picture, with a large presentation screen behind him showing 2023 US Print Book sales figures
David Walter (Circana) discusses 2023 Supercategory Print Sales during BISG 2024 Annual Meeting
After lunch, three awards were presented including The Sally Dedecker Award for Lifetime Service to Phil Ollila of the Ingram Content Group, who was introduced by BISG and Stationers’ Company member Lorraine Shanley, and the BISG Industry Innovator Award presented to Scribd, who was represented by Andrew Weinstein.
Author Walter Mosley addresses the BISG Annual meeting from the podium on the stage in New York City's Harvard Club
Walter Mosley accepting the 2024 Industry Champion Award during the BISG Annual Meeting on April 12, 2024

The 2024 Industry Champion Award was presented to Walter Mosley by Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette Book Group and Mosley’s former editor. Mosley received the award not only in recognition for his body of work, but for his founding of the Publishing Certificate Program at City College of New York (CCNY), his alma mater. His efforts in developing an educational program to create awareness of the opportunities in the publishing industry for people of underrepresented backgrounds was the primary topic in his introduction and in his own speech. To Mosley’s credit, he challenged the room to do more than give him an accolade and move on, but to instead follow his example of driving change in the industry by hiring people from different backgrounds and improving the diversity within the companies involved in publishing books, ensuring all voices and audiences are being seen, heard, and properly represented.

Executive Director Brian O’Leary’s closing session – Book Publishing Next: Changes We Want to See in the Industry – marked the first time Brian has given a keynote during his BISG tenure and provided a capstone to the day by walking through how all of the topics introduced earlier (rights, supply chain, subject codes, metadata, inclusion, and more) were the inspiration for the 3 year plan that had been introduced at the start of the day by the board. Brian highlighted how more growth can be achieved through better management of rights opportunities, managing costs, and being more consumer focused. Brian’s consultative approach to the info gathered through surveys and committee meetings leading up to the event hearkened back to a comment Phil Ollila had made earlier in the day, “People like to be engaged, not managed.” By encouraging ongoing engagement with the audience and the volunteers that comprise the bulk of BISG’s momentum, Brian underscored how the industry plays a vital role in making improvements for the continued benefit of everyone within publishing, rather than a one-way keynote closing the day’s sessions.

The below image cannot be emphasized enough – the volunteers drawn from all walks of the industry drive the content and mission of BISG, making meaningful events like the annual meeting itself and the ongoing webinars throughout the year possible.

Man standing at a podium with a presentation screen behind him showing squares with words including metadata, workflow, rights, supply chain and subject codes
Brian O’Leary, Executive Director of BISG, delivers closing keynote for the 2024 Annual Meeting
Presentation slide outlining future possibilities for publishing industry in North America
What Does the Future Hold – BISG 2024 Annual Meeting

In closing, what does the future hold? Well, Brian shared a few ideas but in the theme of the day’s session, why not join BISG, attend a committee meeting to contribute your voice to the discussion and help steer publishing’s future? More about BISG membership, which is open to companies and individuals, is available here.

Contact Us at Westchester to talk about highlights from the day, and ways we’re helping BISG member orgs and our hundreds of publisher clients around the world with their workflow challenges.

 

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

headshot of Tyler CareyWestchester Publishing Services has decades of history helping different types of publishers and content providers, including trade publishers, children’s publishers, K-12 EdTech platforms, think tanks, legal publishers, industry trade publishers, and many other types of organizations that create and distribute content.

Whether the project is a manuscript for an illustrated board book for children, assessment items for an online learning platform, or a policy paper intended for presentation on Capitol Hill, Westchester has specialists who can help edit, design, and layout the content for the right audience.

Specialized Publication Programs

Trade Associations – and related organizations like professional societies – often have rather different kinds of publications programs from typical publishers. While some industry-driven organizations have book or journal publishing programs focused on topics relevant to their domain area, many have varied publications from professional development content to white papers to conference proceedings to blog posts, each requiring different levels of support, expertise, and workflow customizations.

Here are examples of recent projects trade associations partnered with Westchester Publishing Services on:

• Helping a trade association modify content from their conferences and annual meetings into WebPDFs and ePubs. This content was then made available on their website for free download by members and for purchase by non-members. Conference proceedings in particular can be an area where professional societies and trade associations have content, but it’s laborious to produce rapidly – and in all the needed formats – once a conference wraps.
• Working with a trade association that provides content to medical professionals in a very specific field to create children’s publications to be used by their industry when working with young patients to help them understand and navigate a specific medical condition.
• Partnering with a bar association to better package updates to state statutes into book publications that allow attorneys to quickly understand changes to the laws in their area of practice, as well as access direct links to Fastcase citations in their digital editions.
• Supporting a medical association with editorial and production resources to help them present the best quality professional development and continuing ed materials to be shared with doctors in their specific discipline.
• Helping an educational industry organization edit and typeset new editions of their backlist titles, updating industry standards and information without writing wholly new manuscripts.
• Ongoing editing for industry journals in topic areas including medicine, mathematics, and social sciences.
• Editing and typesetting titles on subjects including management, business technology, and corporate finance for a prominent organization that tracks trends in these areas.
• Creating abstracts, executive summaries, and even tweets that an organization can share as abbreviated versions of their larger studies and white papers, letting industry executives skim the highlights before diving into 200+ page analytical studies.

Different Content, Different Distribution Channels

If you work for a trade association or professional organization, chances are good that you have historically handled your publications and content in ways that differ from your peer associations. Oftentimes, a trade association’s content grows organically as new distribution channels or newer media for online ingestion of content become available. Westchester’s expertise supporting different types of content and distribution methods for academic, trade, and policy groups, is easily applied to the needs of trade association partners to identify cost-effective solutions that will allow your association to efficiently and affordably build new content and expand your publication program.

The team at US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services would be happy to explore how we can help you edit, design, and present your content, as well as share our expertise about how other organizations have navigated similar challenges using industry partners, new channels for distribution, and more. Contact us to talk about the content you currently manage, how you’re looking to engage with your association or industry, and solutions we can provide to help you achieve your goals.

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

It has been longer than I would have liked since I last shared a post-conference blog post. I am glad that NYC’s Digital Book World (DBW), held January 16-18 at the Sheraton on Seventh Avenue, afforded me the opportunity to reconnect in person with many of Westchester’s partners and those of our clients who were able to make the trip to New York for the meeting.

As noted by Lorraine Shanley in her coverage of DBW in MPI’s Publishing Trends newsletter, the attendance was a bit upside down with far more vendor and industry types than publishers, it appeared. That said, the panels presented provided more than a little food for thought on topics ranging from the role of AI in publishing, to how to market books effectively online in the current landscape, to where we’re all headed as an industry.

Screenshot from keynote speechIt was on that latter topic that Margot Atwell, the executive director and publisher of The Feminist Press, provided an insightful session. She revisited a presentation she had shared at London Book Fair in 2019, in which she had identified a number of trend lines in the industry – including equity, consolidation, and the financial health of the industry – and updated her analysis and predictions for 2023. Whether you were representing a vendor, a large publisher, or a start up, her insights on how to foster equity, continue to adapt to a distributed workplace, and navigate the financial and societal challenges in our industry resonated.

Aligned with another one of Westchester’s core principles was the panel on accessibility hosted by Bill Kasdorf, who was a panelist on our September 2022 webinar about accessibility and sustainability. Joining Bill were Michael Johnson from Benetech, Madeleine Rothberg from WGBH, and Richard Orme from the DAISY Consortium. As a Benetech GCA-certified partner, Westchester is keen to help amplify the messaging around not just the needs for accessibility but also the best practices that publishers can adapt into their workflows. Each panelist shared a headline and several discussion points with one another to help further discussion about the needs for publishers to accelerate their adaptation to support readers requiring accessible content. As the coverage of Day 1 of the conference in Publishers Weekly emphasized, Michael Johnson laid out numerous examples of the prevalence within the population of individuals who need or use adaptive technology to consume content. With an estimated 20% of the world’s population having a need, this isn’t a nice to have, it’s a necessity for ensuring as many readers can consume your content as possible.

Bill Kasdorf put perhaps the finest point on the subject by pointing out that due to the European Accessibility Act, if you plan on selling any ePub content in Europe by 2025, that content has to be created accessible or converted to accessibity standards – including backlist content – or it will be illegal to sell within the EU. But, to the point of everyone on the panel, that doesn’t necessarily mean a gigantic investment of resources or a total revision to how you create content. Micromoves internally and with partners can help pick away at the pile quickly and affordably. One key topic that seems to frustrate many publishers is that of alt text. While there are commonly accepted practices, the ‘right’ alt text is not codified the way that say metadata rules might be. As Michael Johnson pointed out, the same image could have different tags depending on its use. An image of the Eiffel Tower in a cookbook about crepes may be ornamental – not relevant to how to make a crepe – so it could just be labeled as “Ornamental” in its alt text entry. In a book about Paris, perhaps a few brief sentences describing the image of the Eiffel Tower would be appropriate. In an engineering book, the Eiffel Tower image might be being used to augment some content about the tensile strength of steel so a different, brief entry would be called for. But in none of these instances is a thoroughly written, revised, and breathtaking narrative called for – alt text entries are there to tell a reader what is in the image, not replace the content that is already in the text that the image is intended to augment. And to Madeleine Rothberg’s point, there is a metadata field called “Accessibility Summary” in each file that allows you to make notations re: pieces that are works in progress, absent, etc., understanding that there will be exceptions and things that may need further attention after initial creation or conversion. We’re all learning new things regarding accessibility – even those of us who are deeply involved in accessibility – and this field serves as a placeholder to indicate where we think something may need to be revisited.

To help us all navigate the world of accessibility, and better plan for the looming EU deadline referenced above, a number of resources were shared by the panel that Bill Kasdorf consolidated here. I highly encourage you to review these resources and share them with any of your team involved in working with authors, editing content, and producing digital files.

Other excellent sessions included Ingram’s presentation about its Ingram iD platform, which allows for direct-to-consumer marketing, sessions from Scribd and Spotify about different revenue models for content distribution, and sessions from AI firms showing how audiobooks and more can benefit from AI.

Westchester’s Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, Deb Taylor, attended DBW as well, and provided this commentary about ChatGPT coming out of a session hosted by another vendor in our space.

Deb shares:

DBW’s sessions were typically not company/product commercials, although like most conferences, a few did lean that way. When the Trends in Content Creation Using AI and Smart Technology session by PageMajik started, I think most expected it to be a carefully disguised commercial about their services. It turned out to be a micro master class in how to think about AI and, in this case, the “controversial” open source AI, GPT3 (or ChatGPT). Keep in mind, PageMajik wasn’t the only one discussing AI and how it has many places in publishing – we learned about interesting uses of AI in audiobook production workflows, and in the use of synthetic voice, too.

So while ChatGPT has been banned on some school networks due to fear of plagiarism, this session reminded us that this is just technology – clever technology, mind you – but still just technology, and we, as humans can make a choice in terms of how to use and deploy it.
“We can be lazy, or we can be productive. The choice is ours.” And yes, we should be mindful that clever technology like GPT, does need some guardrails so it can be harnessed with positive productivity, not laziness or malintent.

For those who are wondering how ChatGPT can be purposeful in the publishing industry, here are a few thoughts:

1. One potential use case is for content generation, where the model can be trained on a specific topic or writing style, and then used to generate new articles, blog posts, or other written content. Additionally, ChatGPT can be used for editing and proofreading by identifying grammar and style errors in existing text. It can also be used for summarizing long articles or books, creating headlines and summaries for news articles, and even writing personalized responses to readers’ questions or comments. Overall, ChatGPT offers a powerful tool for automating and enhancing various aspects of the publishing process.

2. Another area in the workflow that often requires much back and forth with authors and copyediting teams is the reviewing, checking, and correcting of references and citations. ChatGPT can help with reference citation checking in manuscripts by using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify and extract citations from the text. Once the citations have been identified, the model can then compare them to a database of references to ensure that they are accurate and properly formatted. Additionally, ChatGPT can also be trained on specific citation styles, such as MLA or APA, to ensure that the manuscript adheres to the appropriate guidelines. It can also be used to check for missing references or duplicate citations in the manuscript. Overall, ChatGPT can provide a powerful tool for automating the reference citation checking process, which can help to save time and improve the accuracy of the final manuscript.

I’ll leave you with this final disclosure: Both the paragraph on use cases and reference citations were written by ChatGPT, in seconds. Would that be categorized as lazy? No. I believe it was incredibly efficient, however, the best use may be more in the middle. Let ChatGPT be the tool to help you formulate your idea but perhaps not be used verbatim. After all, it’s just technology, and it’s using what it has access to. You still need to validate the information. Try it out for yourself here. And then make sure to ask what its limitations and challenges are.

In general, these new aspects of technology are exciting and ones that we should not be fearful of, but figure out how to use to improve and advance our industry as a whole.

While there was a bit of humor artfully weaved into Book.io’s session, Digital Ownership, NFTs and Revenue Streams for Publishers, there were some interesting things to think about as it relates to the personalized marketing opportunities and the new potential revenue stream that blockchain could offer. eBooks, as we know, are meant to be licenses to the individual to “view, use and display” without any permissions to sell, rent or distribute otherwise. Digital books on the blockchain change that paradigm, and also enable the publisher to experience an ongoing revenue stream from books sold here. Per Book.io, it will increase the intellectual property value of the content. There is also the opportunity for the publisher to direct market the owner since there is more visibility in the digital ownership – think here about gating content with permissions, and even price points to owners vs non-owners. There are efficiencies (multiple languages), interesting design opportunities (different cover designs), unique targeted marketing ideas, and more here. As with all new technology, let’s not dismiss or fear it, but rather let’s get to know and harness it to continue to advance our industry.

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Further coverage of DBW 2023 is available in this post from Publishing Perspectives that provides thorough coverage of keynote speaker Karine Pansa’s presentation about her mandate and expectations for her term heading the International Publishers Association, as well as this article from Publishers Weekly highlighting information for publishing start ups.

As always, US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services is keen to learn more about which portions of your book production workflow you are navigating, in the hope that we can help. Over 500 publishers rely on Westchester for services ranging from manuscript preparation to editorial services to quality, on-time printer file production and accessibility remediation. Contact us today to talk about your publications and how we can help.

IPG Spring Conference, and gearing up for the London Book Fair

By Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

IPG’s annual Spring Conference, held at the Crowne Plaza Heythrop Park in Oxfordshire, is an exceptionally well-organized event welcoming small-to-mid-sized publishers for an intensive two days of sessions and networking, to help address the pressures distinct to publishers of this size. The grounds of the Crowne Plaza are beautiful, looking a bit like a Downton Abbey manor house placed in the midst of a sylvan Tolkien tale.

There are truly few better places to have a conference!  A particular benefit is that it’s removed from the London trade publishing world, bringing Great Britain’s publishers to an area outside the city, thoughtfully disconnecting them from the day-to-day distractions that can pop up when you’re just a quick tube ride away from the office, or the sense of obligation to play tourist should you find yourself in London having come from a place far away.

Westchester’s Interim Director, UK – Tim Davies – and I were excited to exhibit at the conference. Tim came on board just prior to the conference, providing a great opportunity for him to meet with some of our existing clients as well as talk with other publishers in the industry about their current workflows for editorial and production on their publications. Tim has a longstanding history within the IPG and had been invited to host a very well received workshop with smaller publishers about managing growth and operations. He has also dived in to his new role at Westchester and has provided wise guidance on the resources we will continue to expand to support the particular needs of British publishers.

For Westchester overall, finally getting to attend an IPG event was very valuable. The sessions ranged from the topical (the BBC’s Amol Rajan discussing the trends of fake news and the trust in content), to the geopolitical (MP Ken Clarke providing a perspective on Brexit for the publishing industry), to specific publishing topics (workshops, presentations, GDPR and AI sessions, and a keynote by innovative designer Alan Moore). The feedback for IPG following the conference was very positive. You can read their post-conference wrap up here, which is like a mini-summary for those who missed it.

The footprint of IPG’s membership aligns quite closely with the size of clients Westchester typically supports, especially those that are in growth mode and are at the point where they need to evaluate the choice of hiring on a vendor to help support growth, or hiring on more staff and having enough work to keep them constantly busy.  Within the coming weeks, a white paper sponsored by Westchester Publishing Services will be released exploring that idea in greater detail.  Make sure you subscribe to this blog to stay up to date on that. While that paper has been in production for a while it was really valuable to revalidate that position in discussions with many publishers that are approaching that tipping point of growth.

In closing, the IPG conference also served as a great opportunity to meet with several of Great Britain’s independent publishers in advance of attending the forthcoming London Book Fair. It helped us to reaffirm the services that Westchester provides are in alignment with their requirements as we continue to expand our support for publishers in this important market.

Are you headed to LBF? You can find Westchester on Stand 6B107b.  Contact Us to arrange an appointment at the Fair, or just come by our Stand to meet some of our management team and discuss your particular publications needs.