The IPG Podcast

This episode of the podcast welcomes Eleanor Gaffney and Michaela O'Callaghan, who as well as being busy publishers are the current co-chairs of the Society of Young Publishers, the important industry group that celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2024. Eleanor and Michaela tell us about the purpose and activities of the SYP and how both young people and employers can get involved in its work. They also discuss some of the challenges facing aspiring publishers at the moment and what they might do to build a career in the industry. 

The system of legal deposit has preserved print books for centuries, but how can publishers and authors make sure that the digital content they produce now can be accessed by future generations? Alicia Wise of the CLOCKSS project joins the podcast to talk about the scale of the issue and what publishers can do to establish good preservation strategies. There is more about CLOCKSS at www.clockss.org and the information guide Alicia mentions in the podcast is here.

What does Artificial Intelligence mean for publishers and content creators? Nadim Sadek, founder of AI-powered book marketing specialist Shimmr and a published author, discusses its impacts on creativity and the role of publishers, and highlights the benefits of AI among the challenges.

Gavin Marcus and Jeremy Esekow of AI-powered start-up Storywise join the IPG Podcast to discuss their solution to a problem familiar to many publishers: the volume of submissions from authors. They discuss how Storywise helps reduce the slushpile of manuscripts, and argue for the positive applications of AI at a time when so much talk is of its threats to publishing.

Kieran Potter joins the IPG Podcast to discuss how Calibre brings audiobook to people with a print disability. He tells us about the history, purpose and value of the charity and how it works for both users and publishers.

Will Crook, head of policy and communications at Publishers' Licensing Services (PLS), is the guest on this episode of the IPG Podcast. He discusses the vital issue of copyright in publishing, especially as it relates to the threats of Artificial Intelligence, as well as the work that PLS is doing to make sure publishers' interests are represented in government.

The EU Deforestation Regulation comes into force at the end of 2024 and has some important implications for UK publishers operating in Europe. CPI's director of environment and sustainability Lisa Faratro joins the Podcast to introduce the EUDR, explain what publishers will need to do to comply with it, and share some useful resources for support. 

With costs rising and pressure growing to reduce the carbon footprint of books, this episode of the IPG Podcast looks at what publishers can do to become more sustainable, both financially and environmentally. Our guest is Vicky Ellis-Duveen of Clays, who has some excellent advice for making many areas of print, production and supply more cost-effective and greener.

Publishers' Licensing Services is at the heart of publishing in the UK, distributing millions of pounds a year via collective licensing and supporting publishers with rights management and permissions. This episode of the IPG Podcast welcomes chief executive Tom West to talk about its history, purpose and future, as well as some of the big issues facing his organisation and publishing at the moment, including around AI. 

Suzanne Collier, founder of the Bookcareers service, joins the podcast to talk about people-related issues in publishing in 2024. She discusses subjects including recruitment, retention, wellbeing, redundancies and more, and shares some good advice for both employers and employees.

Stephanie Kitchen, co-director of the African Books Collective, joins the podcast to chat about the story and work of the organisation in improving the profile and availability of books from across Africa. She also talks about the visibility of African books in general in the UK now, and about what more can be done to get African voices heard on a global stage.

Chris Hamilton-Emery, co-founder of poetry and literary fiction publisher Salt, tells us the highs and lows of his journey in publishing. He also chats about the value of independence and community in publishing and shares some of the lessons he's learned over nearly 25 years in the industry.

Brexit has led to major issues for UK publishers selling books in Europe. In this episode of the IPG Podcast, James Dunphy of Durnell Marketing discusses the big problems and shares some advice to help publishers make their sales and distribution easier and more effective.

This episode of the IPG Podcast looks at the value of specialist and purpose-driven independents to publishing and the cultural life of the UK. Our guest is Simon Liebesny, formerly of Pluto Press and now associate publisher at Saqi Books. Simon also talks about his career in publishing, plans for Saqi and the importance of communities like the IPG in our industry.

As Artificial Intelligence begins to transform some aspects of publishing, this episode of the IPG Podcast gets an expert overview of the subject from Nadim Sadek, founder and CEO of AI marketing specialist Shimmr, and author of 'Shimmer, Don't Shake', a guide to embracing AI in our industry. Nadim shares his views on the opportunities and challenges of AI and has some great advice for publishers who are starting to adopt it in their work.

Large print books help millions of people to read content they couldn't otherwise access—but it's a format that doesn't always get the attention it deserves. In this episode of the IPG Podcast Ingram's Laura Dolan shares some great advice for publishers on production, pricing, discoverability and more, and flags useful resources to help.

With the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair approaching, this episode of the IPG Podcast discusses multi-media rights and how the event can support visiting publishers. Jenny Kuehne, director of rights and licensing solutions, joins us to chat about opportunities to sell film, TV and audio rights, share new rights-related activities at this year's Book Fair and offer a few tips for making the most of a visit.

Dawn Owens is the founder of the Owens Publishing Company, a US hybrid-style publisher and very likely the IPG's first member based in Texas! She joins the IPG Podcast to tell us about her journey into independent publishing and the rewards it brings. 

Seonaid Francis joins the Podcast to tell us the story of west Wales based publisher Black Bee Books. She remembers what it was like to launch a business during Covid lockdowns, discusses Black Bee's journey and ambitions, and talks about the special role of independent publishers in supporting under-represented voices.

Writer, publisher and charity leader Lela Burbridge joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to tell us her inspiring life story and journey into the world of books. She also tells us about her charitable work in Uganda and the power of books and reading to change lives.

Recommendation and bookselling platform LoveReading gives publishers a great chance to promote their titles and help raise money for books in schools. Co-owner and director Deborah Maclaren joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to tell us all about it.

Sidonie Beresford-Browne joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to talk about the story of Raspberry Books, a children's books packager that is now starting to publish titles of its own too. Sidonie shares the ups and downs of Raspberry's journey so far, and some thoughts on independent publishing in general.  

As publishers continue efforts to make their content available to all, this episode of the IPG Podcast discusses accessibility issues with Julie Willis of River Editorial, a division of Westchester Publishing Services UK. Julie offers some good advice for the benefits and practicalities of fully-accessibie content and discusses the implications of the European Accessibility Act for publishers.    TRANSCRIPT Hello and welcome to the IPG Podcast. I'm Tom Holman of the IPG. In this podcast we're talking about accessibility in publishing—an important subject of course. Awareness of the need to make content freely available to everyone has grown steadily over the years, but there's still some work to be done. To talk about that is Julie Willis, who is editorial director and systems lead at River Editorial, a division of Westchester Publishing Services UK. Julie is particularly passionate and knowledgeable about this subject, and she's with us to share some good advice for any publishers who are working on accessibility projects at the moment. I hope you find our conversation useful.  Tom Holman / Hi Julie, and thanks for joining us on the Podcast. It's great to have you. Before we talk about accessibility, maybe you could give us just a quick guide to Westchester and River Editorial and the services you offer to publishers these days.  Julie Willis / Of course, and thank you for having me Tom. We are River Editorial, which is a part of the UK division of Westchester Publishing Services, a 50 year-old employee-owned US company. We've got wholly-owned typesetting operations in India, and we map our ethical approach to employment across those two operations, as well as in the UK.  Westchester Publishing Services UK is celebrating five years of existence. There are two divisions: River Editorial is headed up by myself and Rosie Stewart, and we manage all aspects of book production for clients including academic publishers of books and journals, as well as organizations and institutions. The education division is headed by Rebecca Durose-Croft and has a large client base, providing upstream services like content creation, curriculum mapping and culturally responsive education reviews to name a few. Tom Holman / Well, happy fifth birthday! I know a lot of IPG members work with you already. So why should publishers be interested in accessibility? There's a moral reason of course—that content should be available to everyone—but I guess there's some sound commercial reasons too? Julie Willis / Above both of those reasons is that it will become compulsory via the European Accessibility Act in June 2025—but we'll come on to talk about that a little later. Commercially, it's been demonstrated by the likes of Apple that customers will buy into your brand if your values as a business mirror their own. There are lots of different phones available on the market, so why do you buy an iPhone? Because you value the same things as Apple. The same is true for businesses that demonstrate they are prioritizing accessibility. If that is a value that your potential customer holds, then they will choose you and your books over others. There's also 80 million people in the EU with a disability—so clearly there's a market there that you can attract. Morally, equal access is clearly a goal of modern western society. Everyone should be able to have the same user experience across all platforms, but especially digital platforms. There's no real excuse for that to be any different for anybody in this day and age.  Tom Holman / When we talk about accessibility, what exactly are we talking about in practical terms? What are the specific things that publishers should be doing to make sure that those 80 million people can access their content? Julie Willis / It's a really good question. Accessibility requirements extend to all digital content, so for publishers that includes their websites as well as their epubs and any other digital deliverables that they provide on a practical level. The very basic things are providing something called alt text, which is short for alternative text, and means that a screen reader can read out a description of the figures and tables.  Alt text must be supplied for figures, so it needs to include what a person with full sight would see and interpret from those figures. Tables have to be tagged correctly so a screen reader can read them in the correct order, as you would read them as a sighted person. So for more complex titles, like education titles that have columns and so on, you can imagine that if it doesn't have the right reading order, it wouldn't make sense. Font choice should be taken into account for neurodivergent individuals, and colour contrast for the same reason. If you've got multi-media content, then transcripts have to be available for those, and there are other considerations, like seizure warnings. That's a very basic introduction to what we should be doing, but there are many more standards and guidance points that we need to consider along with those top-level ones. Tom Holman / There's a lot to think about there. Are there any useful accessibility standards or resources out there that people should be aware of?  Julie Willis / Absolutely. The main one that most people are working towards at the moment is WCAG —Web Content Accessibility Guidelines—2.1 Level AA, to be superseded by WCAG 3.0, which provides standards for neurodivergence and autism. It's an international organization and their website has enormous amounts of information and guidelines to help guide you through the requirements.  There is also an International Standard Organization control—30071-1—which brings it all together. That goes beyond technical standards and talks about embedding accessibility into your managerial processes. If you've heard of the expression ‘born accessible', that is the key—the goal that we're trying to reach. There's also an organization called the Daisy Consortium that provides tools and standards and advice for best practice within the publishing industry for people with print disabilities. That doesn't just mean print—it means digital accessibility Issues as well.  There's also an organization called PAAG, which stands for Publishing Accessibility Action Group. They have a Charter that you can sign up to, and I would encourage publishers to look at getting their house in order so they can sign up, which requires certain standards to be met.  Tom Holman / It's good to know that there's a lot of help out there. And there's an awful lot of acronyms in there as well! You mentioned the European Accessibility Act earlier. There's a lot of talk about it at the moment, but there's also uncertainty about what it actually means in practice. I guess in some ways it's too early to tell, but what's your sense of the implications for publishers?  Julie Willis / One element I want to get across is that the Act is already in existence. It's already been passed and we've already signed up to it. It's enforced from 28th June 2025, so that date is a benchmark, but it's already in existence. Key individuals in the industry that have read the Act feel that that backlist conversion is within its scope, and obviously that's an enormous task. So not only does it mean then that all books published after 28th June 2025 have to be accompanied by an accessible epub, it also looks like the backlist has to be converted. However, it looks like there's a five-year grace period in which you can get your backlist fully accessible. There's more information online about the Act and what it means for publishers.  Tom Holman / And finally, what can Westchester do to help IPG members on this front? There's a lot to get through, and some publishers might feel a bit daunted by it. What can you do to help with accessibility?  Julie Willis / Well, we're a Benetech accredited supplier. Benetech is a global non-profit technology organization that validates the accessibility standards of our epubs and continues to check them annually as well. We're offering IPG members a deal to create certified-accessible epubs for them—normally they couldn't get that certification themselves, but because we are producing the files for them we can certify the files individually. We can do that for both frontlist and obviously for conversion of backlist epubs. We're also looking to organize an accessibility webinar In the summer, and we plan to invite key individuals within the industry to discuss the European Accessibility Act in more detail and give publishers the latest interpretation of what it means for them. We'll be publicizing both of those in the IPG's newsletter.

As publishing works towards net-zero status, carbon offsetting has become a big talking point. In this episode of the IPG Podcast Martin Klopstock talks about Kogan Page's excellent work on sustainability and why and how it offsets emissions to reduce its environmental impacts.

Christi Daugherty and Jack Jewers of Moonflower Books - winner of the Nick Robinson Newcomer Award at the 2023 Independent Publishing Awards - join the podcast to share their story. They talk about Moonflower's rapid success and the factors behind it, with inspiration for every new publisher to take away.  

Katie Read, founder of books PR agency READ Media, joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to talk about book festivals and their value to publishers. She's got good advice for getting involved with events and making the most of them in sales and promotional terms.

The London Book Fair director Gareth Rapley joins the IPG Podcast to tell us about the 2023 edition of the event from 18 to 20 April. He chats about some of the highlights of the Book Fair and shares some good advice for making the most of your time there.

In this episode of our Working in Publishing series we're joined by Bloomsbury's audio assistant and Publishing Post founder Chelsea Graham. She has some great insights into working life in the exciting area of audio, and explains how the Publishing Post can help aspiring publishers. 

Bonnier senior audio editor Marina Stavropoulou takes us inside working life in audiobook publishing in this episode of the IPG Podcast. She tells us how she got into the industry and the work that goes into producing audiobooks, and shares some great tips for aspiring publishers. 

Class Publishing's chief executive Lorna Downing joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to discuss the evolution and achievements of the business over more than 30 years. As the IPG turns 60, she also talks about what it means to belong to a community of independent publishers.

David Taylor of Ingram Content Group joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to introduce his company's expanded UK wholesale service. As well as explaining its benefits for independent publishers, he looks ahead to opportunities and challenges for publishers in 2023.

As the IPG celebrates its 60th birthday, stalwart members Jonathan Harris and Martin Woodhead discuss its story so far. They talk about change at the Guild and across publishing over six decades, and what independent publishers get out of membership.  

This episode of the IPG Podcast looks at the benefits of publishing management systems with Nella Klopotek von Glowczewski and Viktoria Menslin of Klopotek. They tell us how software can reduce effort, increase productivity and help in particular with metadata and remote working.

As the IPG celebrates 60 years of support for independent publishing in 2022, this episode welcomes Nicky Ramsey, CEO of Edinburgh University Press, a leading academic press and a longstanding IPG member. Nicky talks about change, challenges and opportunities for EUP, and about what it gets out of belonging to the IPG.

This episode of the IPG Podcast discusses the value of publishing platforms, XML workflows and good metadata management with Jo Bottrill of Newgen KnowledgeWorks. As well as sharing advice on all three subjects, Jo has thoughts on current opportunities and challenges for academic and educational publishers.

Managing royalties can be a stressful part of publishing, but help is at hand if you need it. In this episode of the IPG Podcast we talk to David Marlin of MetaComet Systems about taking the effort and risk out of calculating and paying royalties via automation.  

As the IPG celebrates 60 years of support for independent publishing, this episode of the Podcast looks back on the story of children's publisher and longstanding member bsmall, with founder Cath Bruzzone and publisher Sam Hutchinson. Cath and Sam talk about their achievements, change in the industry and the role of the IPG in their growth. 

In this episode of the IPG Podcast we welcome Kate Macdonald, founder of Handheld Press. Kate tells us what it's like to launch and run your own business and discusses the ups and downs of her day-to-day work. She also shares some good advice for anyone thinking about starting out on their own.

This episode of the IPG Podcast celebrates the 100th anniversary of longstanding IPG member Bible Reading Fellowship. Olivia Warburton joins us to look back on BRF's first century, and ahead to what is in store over the next few years.

This episode of the IPG Podcast goes inside working life in independent publishing with Catriona Allon, production editor at Bristol University Press. Catriona talks about her career so far and what she enjoys about production work, and shares advice for people who want to work in a similar area.

In this episode of the IPG Podcast we discuss working life in independent publishing with Caroline Gorham, production and systems director at Canongate Books. She chats about her journey through publishing and her varied roles and responsibilities at Canongate, and offers tips for people who want to work in production.

Robert Webb, head of production at Pluto Press, joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to talk about his working life in production. He tells us about the varied work of a production professional and the kind of skills that are needed, and shares a few tips for people who want to work in the field.

This episode of the IPG Podcast celebrates the 10th anniversary of IPG member Jacaranda Books. Founder and CEO Valerie Brandes tells us its story and achievements so far, including its groundbreaking work to diversify British publishing. 

This episode of the IPG Podcast discusses diversity and inclusion in publishing with Josie Dobrin, chief executive of Creative Access. She explains what Creative Access does to encourage more people from under-represented backgrounds into the creative industries, and how publishers can get involved.

This episode of the IPG Podcast welcomes John Seaton, former publisher and partner of Mo Siewcharran, who was known to many in publishing before her death in 2017. John tells us about the Fund that he established in Mo's memory to help smaller publishers provide internships to people from under-represented backgrounds, and explains how it is helping publishing become a more diverse industry. 

This episode of the IPG Podcast welcomes Nicola Solomon, chief executive of the Society of Authors. Nicola discusses some of the issues facing authors at the moment, tells us what the Society is doing on its members' behalf, and suggests some ways for publishers to serve them even better.

Brilliant Publications co-founder Priscilla Hannaford joins the IPG Podcast to tell us what it meant to win the title of Westchester Education Services Education Publisher of the Year at the 2021 Independent Publishing Awards. She also discusses Brilliant's response to COVID and the unique strengths of independent publishers.

After three years away, the London Book Fair returns from 5 to 7 April 2022. In this episode of the IPG Podcast we're joined by LBF director Andy Ventris to talk about various aspects of the event, how to make the most of it, and why book fairs are still so valuable in the age of digital communications.

Our guest on this episode of the IPG Podcast is Shanon Rademacher, senior digital editor at Class Professional Publishing and The Bookseller Young Independent Publisher of the Year in 2021. Shanon talks to us about her career so far, shares good advice for other aspiring publishers and explains why all rising stars should enter the 2022 Independent Publishing Awards.

This episode of the IPG Podcast welcomes Joanie Borders of Edelweiss, the platform that helps publishers present title information and digital copies to booksellers, reviewers and others. Joanie tells us how the platform works and gives us her take on some of the opportunities and challenges facing UK bookshops at the moment.

In this episode of the IPG Podcast we're joined by David Parker of new US-based academic publisher Lived Places Publishing. David tells us how he's building the business in collaboration with Newgen Publishing in the UK and how to make partnerships like this work. He's also talking about some of the big issues in academic publishing at the moment, especially around library delivery and access.