The BookSmarts Podcast, with Joshua Tallent

Ann Kjellberg is the Founding Editor of the Book Post book review, an innovative newsletter-based book review service which delivers thoughtful, in-depth literary criticism from distinguished writers directly to subscribers' inboxes.

With nearly 30 years of experience at the New York Review of Books, Kjellberg brings a wealth of expertise to the evolving world of literary journalism. She joins the BookSmarts Podcast to explore the changing landscape of book reviewing, offering a unique perspective on the challenges facing book reviews in the digital age. This episode delves into the decline of traditional book reviews, the limitations of short-form content platforms like BookTok and Bookstagram, and the critical mission of preserving the influence of book reviewing for the future.

Len Edgerly is the host of the Kindle Chronicles podcast, a long-running show dedicated to exploring digital reading technologies and publishing innovations.

Kristina Radke is the Senior Vice President of Business Growth and Engagement at NetGalley.

She joins the BookSmarts Podcast to launch of Booktrovert, a new consumer marketing platform for publishers and authors. Booktrovert allows for easy creation of marketing campaigns with digital giveaways and interactive tools for readers, designed to complement the existing NetGalley platform. If you're interested in becoming a Booktrovert publisher, reach out to concierge@netgalley.com.

Daniel Berkowitz is the Ad Sales Director for Bookshop.org, an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. He is also the founder of AuthorPop, a one-stop shop for every author's digital needs.

He joins the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss the importance of book advertising for both publishers and authors. He has worked with authors at all stages of their careers to help build their audience and increase discoverability, and previously spent several years at Open Road Integrated Media as Executive Director of Paid Marketing, where he worked with both authors and publishers to drive discoverability of their titles through targeted advertising solutions.

Rebecca Burgoyne is the Executive Director of Business Systems Integrations for the United Methodist Publishing House. She joins the BookSmarts Podcast discuss what Lean Six Sigma is and why book publishers should be incorporating this type of knowledge work, along with the importance of understanding workflows, reducing waste, and more!

David Hetherington is the Vice President of Global Business Development at Books International, a leading provider of US and International book manufacturing, print and digital distribution services for the book publishing industry. With over 40 years of experience in the book publishing industry, David has served as a Board Member for the Book Industry Study Group, Book Manufacturers Institute, and PubWest, along with the Pace University Graduate School of Publishing.

As a publishing veteran, David joins the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss how to establish practices that ensure your business is more resilient in times of crisis. We discuss how publishers should address common risks, how to prepare for those risks in advance, lessons learned from the pandemic as well as other known book publisher challenges, and the importance of building relationships in the industry to better prepare for potential crises.

Jason Brockwell is the President of National Book Network, one of the largest independent book distributors in the United States. With titles in nearly every bookstore category, NBN has helped a broad variety of publishers with their distribution needs since its founding in 1986. Before becoming an executive at the company, Jason was a national account manager calling on several large customers including Amazon and Barnes & Noble for NBN and also worked as a field sales rep in the the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

This episode of the BookSmarts Podcast was recorded live at the 2024 Publishing Innovation Forum. Jason Brockwell attended the conference to lead a discussion on "Distribution in the Digital Age: Supply Chains, Marketing, Sustainability, and More". We appreciate Jason allowing us to record this session and replay it for you on our podcast! Jason discusses how National Book Network helps publishers, how COVID has (still) affected the distribution industry, successful digital strategies for distributors, sustainability concerns, and more!

Michael Johnson is the Vice President of Content at Benetech. In this role, he works directly with publishers, conversion houses, technology platforms, retailers, and educational institutions to help them understand and implement processes that allow for fully accessible content to get from authors all the way through to the end reader. He also has a long-time relationship to publishing standards having sat on several ISO, NISO, BISG, and MARC standards committees throughout his career and currently sits on the Board of Directors for DAISY.

With almost 40 years of experience in the technology, publishing, and distribution markets, Michael joins us on the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss the services that Benetech offers to create accessible ebooks, such as Bookshare, and provides advice on how to make books GCA (Global Certified Accessible) certified.
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Kristina Radke is the Vice President of Business Growth and Engagement at NetGalley, a service that helps publishers and authors promote digital review copies and audiobooks to book advocates and industry professionals, including reviewers, booksellers, librarians, educators, media/journalists, and other book trade professionals. With over 15 years of experience in book marketing, publicity, and client relationships, Kristina joins us on the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss NetGalley's expansion into the audiobook market, along with trends and strategies for publishers to be aware of when uploading audiobooks to NetGalley.

Beat Barblan is the General Manager of Bowker, the official ISBN agency for the United States and Australia. As a senior level publishing technology and international standards executive, Beat joins us on the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss Bowker's evolving role in the publishing industry and their efforts to support authors and publishers, as well as the important of metadata in book discoverability.

Victoria Sutherland is the Founder and Publisher of Foreword Magazine, Inc., and Director of Children’s Books USA. She joins the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss how Foreword Magazine can help smaller, independent publishers with their marketing endeavors.

The mission of Foreword Magazine, Inc. is to help booksellers and librarians discover great books from indie presses through an artistic magazine dedicated to book reviewing. Victoria has spent many years of her career focusing on independent publishers and small press authors, and currently serves as Treasurer of the Independent Book Publishers Association. She discusses marketing trends that she’s discovered throughout her career as well as the process and positive outcomes of their book reviews.

Mary Carlomagno is a publishing veteran with experience on all sides of the business including marketing positions at Barnes & Noble and Random House. She is a nationally recognized organizing expert and author whose books have appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Program, The Today Show, and CBS News.

Laura Brady is an inclusive publishing expert whose priority is always to put users first. She has more than 25 years of publishing experience creating and converting eBooks, training publishers on accessible workflows, and consulting for service organizations about how to publish inclusively while worrying about everyone’s reading experience.

Currently, she serves on the board of the Accessible Books Consortium, is a lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, and is the Accessibility Training Manager at eBOUND Canada. Laura joins the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss what accessibility in book publishing means and how to effectively practice inclusivity so readers of all kinds of abilities and disabilities can easily access and enjoy your content.

Michele Cobb is the Executive Director of Audio Publishers Association and PubWest, publisher of AudioFile Magazine and MMB media, and a partner at Forte Business Consulting. Needless to say, she is a very busy woman and joins us at the BookSmarts Podcast to discuss what it’s like juggling so many hats at once.

The Coronavirus pandemic threw a wrench in many areas of the publishing industry. Michele shares how significantly the pandemic impacted how her associations handle publishing conferences and award ceremonies. Michele also discusses the transition from online back to in-person conferences as well as the judging process for her many awards, including PubWest’s Book Design Awards, the APA’s Audio Awards and The Ambies, run by the Podcast Academy.

Ebook piracy is a constant struggle for some publishers, especially when their books are used in academic settings. In many cases, this can be due to the availability of the content, not an inability or lack of desire to pay for it. In this episode of the BookSmarts podcast, Joshua talks with Emma Watson, the Account Manager at Perlego, a UK-based book subscription service, about how subscription models can help alleviate piracy issues. 

The two talk about how solid SEO can help redirect readers who are looking for free content to subscriptions that legally provide what they need, the fears that publishers have when considering subscription services, and how data provided by subscription services can help you understand your readers better. 

This episode features a conversation with Angela Bole, the current CEO of the Independent Book Publishers Association, about the role of independent publishing and the work of IBPA in that community. Angela's background is deeply rooted in publishing. She worked in a bookstore in college, then went on to complete the New York University graduate program in Book Publishing. After that she worked for the Book Industry Study Group before taking on her current role as CEO of IBPA 9 years ago.

IBPA's mission is "to lead and serve independent publishers through advocacy, education, and tools for success," and the association serves that mission by developing and advocating for professional publishing standards, educating independent publishers about the publishing industry via webinars and their awesome Publishing University conference , and providing access to discounts on tools and resources.

In this episode, Charles Watkinson, the Director of University of Michigan Press and the Associate University Librarian for Publishing at University of Michigan Library, joins us to discuss Open Access ebooks and their role in the publishing community. Open Access ebooks are essentially freely available ebooks, usually for scholarly monographs, that are released under a license that allows reuse (most commonly a Creative Commons license).

University of Michigan Press has experimented with Open Access since the 1990's, but developed their current program starting in the mid-2000's. Their goal, under their Fund to Mission program, is to get their monograph program to almost 100% open access by 2024.

Joshua and Charles talk in this interview about release schedules and approaches for Open Access ebooks, licensing models, hybrid chapter-only models, and more. Charles also shares some of the specific approaches UM Press is taking, including combining their open access titles with their catalog subscription program.

Kevin Franco is a Product Manager at Firebrand Technologies with a background in digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and direct-to-consumer ebook sales. He is leading the development of some new technologies at Firebrand, and has been doing a lot of thinking about book marketing strategies that can help increase book sales.

We talked about the book marketing funnel from discovery through conversion, with an emphasis on strategies you can use to increase your Book Exposure Optimization (BEO) and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). These strategies include metadata changes and enhancements, advertising campaigns, and data analytics, but the specific strategies you implement will impact different parts of the funnel.

This episode features a recording of a panel discussion I led with Mary McAveney, Chief Marketing Officer at Open Road Integrated Media, at the BISG 2022 Annual Meeting. The discussion, titled "Future Proofing Your Workflow," aimed to cover some open questions about the process of becoming more prepared for the future of publishing, whatever that might look like: Where do we start? How do we know what the future might look like? And will this ever end?

My main takeaway from the conversation, and what I hope you also are able to glean from it as you listen, is that being adaptable and being able to engage with change, whenever and however it happens, is more important than seeking out change specifically.

Cory Verner is the CEO of ONE Audiobooks, a publisher of audiobooks and a turnkey audio services provider. Cory has been working in the audiobooks industry for over 20 years, and has seen the changes in technology, the changes in focus, and the growth in sales as the format has taken off in 6-7 years. Cory and I talk about some of the reasons for that growth, the demographics of listeners, and some specific differences between the Inspirational Books market that he is closely connected to compared to the general audiobooks market.

We also talk about how the audiobooks industry has changed over time, including technology changes that have driven much of the recent growth, and we discuss the risks publishers take on when they create their own audiobook program. 

In this episode we are joined by Mark Herschberg, publisher at Cognosco Media, author of The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You, and the developer of a new app that is attempting to promote a new take on reader interaction with book content.

I was a bit skeptical of Mark's approach from the offset, having seen so many ebook apps and new ideas about digital engagement flame out over the years. However, Mark and I had a great conversation about how the relevant content in a book might be more or less than the actual page count, how so many new technologies are just like sticking a fake horse head on the front of an automobile, and more. Mark shared some of the ideas behind his app, most notably the notifications feature that can help readers recall key points from books they have read.

This week's guest is George Slowik, Jr., the Chairman and Owner of PWxyz LLC, the parent company of Publishers Weekly, who joins us to discuss the magazine's history, the digital archive, and more.

Publishers Weekly was launched in 1872 as a bibliographic source for all publishers to list forthcoming titles. Over its 150 year history, the magazine has continued to provide news and features about the publishing industry, and has even expanded to provide over 9,000 new book reviews every year.

George gives a brief overview of the magazine's history, discusses the development of the digital archive, the special anniversary edition to be released in April, and his thoughts about the future of publishing.

In this episode I am joined by Thad McIlroy, an electronic publishing analyst and author based in San Francisco. Thad writes in-depth articles on publishing topics for his own website, The Future of Publishing, as well as for Publishers Weekly. We started off the conversation talking about the need to understand metadata from a strategic perspective, not just from a clerical or practical perspective, even as far up the food chain as the publisher or CEO.

With that strategic understanding in place, the next step for any publishing company is to experiment with your metadata and find what works for your books. Every company is different, and every list is different, so it is important to put in the time and effort to see what will be most effective for you.

Thad also provided his thoughts on the value of addressing metadata on backlist titles, choosing BISAC subject codes, creating keywords, and the differences between discoverability, findability, and conversion.

In this episode, Robin Whitten, editor & founder of AudioFile Magazine, joins us to discuss audiobook listener demographics and performance quality. Audiobook sales have grown significantly in a short amount of time. With that growth, we have also seen an increase in the number of available audiobooks and a revolution in audiobook production.

Robin expounds on some of the major advances in the audiobook world, how the demographics of audiobook listeners are changing, and the genres that are the most popular. She also talks about how important the sound design and narration are to the success of an audiobook, and explains how AudioFile Magazine does its reviews.

Fran Toolan, CEO of Firebrand Technologies, joins me to continue the conversation about cybersecurity in the publishing industry. Fran pulls back the covers a bit on this topic, revealing that Firebrand has had four security incidents in the last two years, including two ransomware attacks. And Firebrand is not alone; there have been a number of other breaches in the industry, too, so Fran is not the only executive losing sleep over this issue.

We discuss phishing attacks, environment and server checks, the NIST framework, monitoring, two factor authentication, and more, and offer some advice for individual publishers, for publishing services companies, and for the industry as a whole about how we can work together to address this problem.

The month of October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and this week's podcast features Nick Espinosa, an expert in cybersecurity and network infrastructure. Nick has consulted with clients ranging from small businesses up to the fortune 500 level for decades, and he's the Chief Security Fanatic at Security Fanatics, a cybersecurity and cyber warfare firm that's dedicated to designing custom cyber defense strategies for medium to large enterprise corporations. Nick is also a TEDx speaker, a regular columnist for Forbes, an award winning co-author of the best selling book Easy Prey, and he's also the host of The Deep Dive, a nationally syndicated radio show.

Nick and Joshua talk about cybersecurity in the publishing industry, including the value of doing an assessment of your threat tolerance, the threat of ransomware to publishers, two-factor authentication, and other related topics. Nick gives his recommendations to publishers for securing their data, talking with their team about security, and more.

Alessandra Torre, CEO of Authors A.I. and BingeBooks and a NY Times bestselling Psychological Thriller and Romance author, joins Joshua to talk about various strategies independent authors utilize when marketing and selling their books, and how publishers can take advantage of these strategies.

Alessandra's suggestions cover a wide range of topics. Being flexible in pricing, testing new prices periodically, and setting affordable ebook prices can be a great way to see what price the market will bear for specific products. Cover reveals can be a great opportunity to get the word out about a new title, and sometimes the author can be a herald for that reveal event. Authors can also be helpful in getting upcoming books into the hands of blogger, influencers, and reviewers (for example, by using the widgets available in NetGalley). Also, an update to a backlist title's cover image has the potential to give older titles new life and keep them relevant to readers for many years to come.

While some publishers have a dedicated team working on their backlist, no single publisher is able to completely manage every title.

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Amazon has recently made two big changes to their publishing systems, and both of these changes will have an impact on publishers of all sizes.

The first change is that Amazon now allows publishers using the Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) platform to set up A+ Content for their book product pages. The A+ program has historically only been available to companies who are signed up for the Brand Registry, so this change opens the door for many more A+ pages to be made. Joshua discusses the impact this change will have on discoverability and sales, as well as some of the limitations and gotchas that publishers should watch out for.

The second change is that Amazon no longer accepts ebooks in the Mobipocket format. The MOBI file type has been a fixture in Amazon's ebook program since the Kindle was released in 2007. It is a compiled file format that acted as a container for the HTML and other code behind the scenes. Amazon will no longer accept MOBI files from any publishers, either for new books or for books that are being re-uploaded, and they are recommending that publishers send EPUB, Word documents, or KPF (Kindle Create) files. Joshua discusses these changes, including offering some practical suggestions for publishers who are trying to figure out what to do next.

Standards are an important driving force in every civilization. Standards help us all agree on how we define things, and provide opportunities for us to more effectively engage with each other in trade and in other ways.

In this episode, Joshua talks with Erik Nelson, a friend and marketing consultant, about how publishers can approach rethinking their own branding, and develop a more powerful approach to marketing based on their passion and mission.

Publishers, like other businesses, will fit broadly into three categories: 1) Those who are starting from scratch, have no major direct-to-consumer approach or marketing to speak of; 2) those who have a customer-facing brand, but know some things are broken and they don't know where to start on the repairs; and 3) those who already have some momentum on branding and direct-to-consumer, but want to throw some rocket fuel on that area. This podcast will be helpful for publishers in all three of those situations.

Before you jump headlong into marketing and advertising, though, you have to start with the "Why". Where does the passion behind your company infuse your work? What's the deeper, more aspirational thing that got you in this business? What gets you jazzed and excited? You want to bottle that up and show it to your customers.

After you know the Why, think about how you want to express it. That is where branding comes into the picture. Branding is like a mental shortcut for consumers. You want them to think of your brand when they think about the topic of passion behind it. Branding comes out in two areas: in the aesthetics or design, and in the messaging.

Only after you have defined the Why, and developed the branding around that Why, can you start approaching the question of how to implement the sales and marketing aspects of your direct-to-consumer strategy. And that strategy will need to take on different forms in the pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages.

Joshua and Erik get into all of this, and more, with direct connections to the publishing business and suggestions for helping you get more out of your branding.