Episode 29: Angela Bole on Independent Publishing

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.

You can find out more about IBPA at ibpa-online.org.

Transcript

Joshua Tallent 

So this week on the BookSmarts Podcast, I’m excited to have Angela Bole who is the CEO of The Independent Book Publishers Association and my future boss on the podcast with me, Angela, thanks for joining me.

Angela Bole 

Absolutely. Thanks, Joshua.

Joshua Tallent 

Yes, for those of you who may not have heard, Angela has agreed to become the CEO of the Firebrand Group in February 2023. So, about nine months from now, seven months from now—yeah, so we’re looking forward to having Angela, lead our team when Fran is moving along and moving just to the board of the whole Firebrand Group.  But we’re not here to talk about that, we’re actually here to talk about what you’re working on right now. So, Angela, before we talk about IBPA, because I do want to talk a lot about what IBPA is, what it does, and what it’s working on. I’d love to for you to give a little bit of background of yourself, where do you come from? What’s your background in publishing? You worked at BISG for a while, what’s your story in the publishing world?

Angela Bole 

I know, I think about it now and the story gets longer and longer every time you tell it because the longer you’ve been in the industry, your story, you add layers—well, I’ve been working in the publishing industry for just over 20 years and I started where I think a lot of people start, which is as a literature major, and working in a bookstore, which was great experience and really introduced me to what the publishing industry could be—I worked in a very tiny bookstore in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And I made a great relationship with the Random House representative there, who was part of the New York City scene and was saying, telling me in my little tiny Jackson Hole, Wyoming town, that New York City is where I wanted to be or needed to be if I wanted to do anything in the book industry, that I was probably just wasting my time skiing, and I wasn’t wasting my time but I was definitely not advancing my career at that point in time. So I did take her advice and I went to New York for grad school, I did the New York University graduate program in Book Publishing, which is what introduced me to all the people that I needed to know. I absolutely was a book outsider, it’s a very small industry and when you don’t know anybody, and you’re trying to forge a career in this space, it’s good to have something to settle on to kind of introduce you around. So, that for me was the Publishing Program at New York University and it got me into the Book Industry Study Group job, which I know is where you and I met for the first time 15 years ago, maybe?

Joshua Tallent 

 Way too long. Yeah.

Angela Bole 

I know, it’s just crazy when you think about time flying —and I really love that job. I mean, for somebody who was that young, to come into a space where your entire job is to negotiate Supply Chain issues with all of the major players and to just talk about, well, you know, what would be best practices? Obviously, all of our systems don’t currently do that thing but there is some theoretical best practice that we could be doing as an industry or we could be leaning into as an industry, and how can we talk about that, negotiate that and eventually do that work if it’s at all possible, and obviously, some successes, some things that were challenging and still haven’t been accomplished but it was a great way to get this very high level view of what publishing is, as an industry, and the Supply Chain looks like as an industry, and I did that for almost 10 years before coming over to IBPA.

Joshua Tallent 

Awesome. So you took over the CEO position at IBPA. How long ago? How long have you been in that position now?

Angela Bole 

I literally just crossed my nine year mark, like yesterday—So yeah, nine years.

Joshua Tallent 

So nine years of working at IBPA and managing the processes and helping independent publishers do what they do. So, let’s talk a little bit about what IBPA is for anybody who may not be very familiar with the organization, what’s the vision? What’s the mission of the organization?

Angela Bole 

Sure, It’s a nonprofit trade association. So to give, you know, the geeky definition of what this thing is—there is a trade association for everything and we obviously are serving the independent publishing side of this industry. And our mission is to lead and serve independent publishers through advocacy, education, and tools for success, so those are really the three pillars that guide all of the work that this organization does. There’s—obviously a huge need to advocate for independent publishers, there’s a lot of them, just a whole bunch of them if you consider all the different business models, but they’re small, and so on their own, they don’t have the loudest voice in the industry. So really, to kind of pull them all together and to advocate for them as a group, is a big part of what IBPA is here to do and has been doing since the 1983 when it was founded. The education aspect, we want a professional publishing industry, we want everyone who’s publishing to do so professionally, to understand the standards, and to publish to those standards to work together. So, another huge aspect of what IBPA does is to educate, and to keep the standards of independent publishing very, very high as high as possible. And I should note, maybe your listeners know that you were actually on our board of directors for a while so all of this is familiar to you, you worked really hard with us on the standard issues, in particular, to help us understand how we can get independent publishers up to par with the Big Five, if you will. And then tools for success is just our way of saying, we’ll give you discounts, we’ll give you money, help you find money that you can use to run your business, we’ll—discounts on programs like Edelweiss, Bookscan—I can’t even think all of them—trade review programs. We have a discount with NetGalley, which is part of the Firebrand Group right now so we’re trying to help them get into the industry by saving the money on the things that they’re going to use.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit more about the advocacy side of that, has been working quite a bit actually, over the last, even when I was on the board was that four years ago, I guess, three or four years ago, there was a lot of work being done, even then non advocacy. So what are some of the things that you guys have taken on in the last couple of years to advocate on behalf of independent publishers?

Angela Bole 

Well, I think one of the big things is just visibility within the Supply Chain—it’s difficult to get in with independent bookstores, for example, because that is a very crowded market already. There’s enough books and there’s not enough shelf space, there’s too many books, and there’s not enough shelf space. So being able to talk with booksellers, and to push the value of independently published books, we’re really talking about how, you know, we’ve had a bit of a reckoning over the past several years related to diversity, equity, and inclusion—and we knew at IBPA, that a lot of that work that was missing in the general larger publishing sense was already being done quite well by the independent publishing community. So helping everyone understand that the diversity that they’re looking for, the different voices that they need to be supporting, or they should be supporting, we all should be supporting in the industry are here. They’re just, you know, again, they’ve been quieter, because there’s only been one voice as opposed to a big five voice. So really, again, advocating for visibility, let’s bring these independently published voices and these independent voices into the larger space.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, that’s great. So other things that you guys have been doing, I know that there’s been a lot of work on the education side and on even, you know, helping independent publishers engage more with the overall industry standards you talked about a minute ago. And I know, Lee on your team has been working extensively with doing more webinars and, teachings and trainings and things like that. What are some of the other things you guys have seen on the education front recently?

Angela Bole 

When we talked about the education, and you’re right, we’ve ramped up a lot and everyone had to go through when COVID hit which is completely read figure what we meant by education, because we couldn’t do in person anymore. And we don’t want to be on exhaustive zoom meetings for the rest of our lives so we really had to think about how to make our virtual education interactive and to continue to bring that networking aspect into space where you’re literally sitting at your kitchen table. I mean, I did the first two years of COVID at my kitchen table before I finally put a desk in my spare bedroom and here we are today and a lot of people did, we just didn’t take the time to really set ourselves up for this new virtual space, which I think we have done. So in the education space, I think that’s going to be the new norm, I think we’re going to need to figure out how to reach people in their kitchens and their living rooms, as well as in their offices, and not lose that networking or community feeling. Keep that there as much as you can and I do think it’s possible because I’ve seen it happen in our webinars and roundtables, so we have to focus on that. And then the other thing we talk about is you just have to keep saying the same things over and over. I mean, I know you and I have joked about metadata, we could do a metadata class every month, until we retire and it would be useful and helpful and it would move the dial, and somebody who had been in the metadata field for 20 years might come away from that one of those sessions and be like, oh, yeah, light-bulb moment, because—it has to be iterated it, has to keep going, you have to keep talking about and there’s always new people, there’s always misunderstandings. So, a good deal of what we do is keep hitting the, you know, the greatest hits, go through the greatest hits, and then go through them again and then go through them again, and not a lot changes, you know, some innovative stuff happening. I’m interested in going to the page break conference that’s going to happen in October so there’s space for you to talk about big picture, big thought, things that I want to be involved in those two, but there’s all of this, like, fundamental things, we just need to continue to reinforce.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. Speaking of education and conferences, you guys put on the IBPA Publishing University everywhere, every year and I think, you know, as someone who’s gone to PubU many years and has been a teacher there, a speaker there, a lot as well. I think it is one of the best conferences in the publishing industry, it’s one of the few where you can really get some very, very practical application, understanding that bigger conferences, people just kind of tend to think everybody knows everything, you know, you’re here to learn some other deeper concept or some other new thing. So, you guys have been doing a virtual and in person, what the last two or three years now, I guess, how’s that been going? And how’s what’s the response been in the independent publishing community to the conference, the changes you’re making there?

Angela Bole 

Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, I love this conference, too—I think because of the community, I mean, really, when you bring these independent publishers together, they are absolutely wanting to be there and sometimes you go to these big conferences, too, and you know, their boss sent them, or whatever, like you’re sitting there at lunch, and you’re like, okay, well, you know, but here, it’s just like this rabid excitement, everybody is really, really interested in doing better and knowing more. So I do think that that’s what kind of brings that energy to an independent publishing conference that might kind of be a little missing from some of the larger ones, where it’s kind of just your work-a-day thing. The response to us, we did a fully virtual conference and then this past April, we did a hybrid where we did a virtual first and then an in person. And of course, people love it, like, everybody wants everything, they want all the options, like, they’re definitely not going to take advantage of all the options but if you start to suggest, well, we’re going to pull back here—no, don’t pull back there, continue to push in all areas so you got to go north, south, east and west at all times. I mean, the response has been great, but it might not be sustainable—Just say it that way and I think next year, we will be in Coronado, California, which is outside San Diego and the talk currently is just to do an in person, because we have robust virtual programming at least three or four webinars every month, if somebody wanted to plug into a virtual, and then when you have a conference, let’s be in person, the only issue that we stumble on and need to really think through, is accessibility issues. So there will be a certain segment of our population that will never be able to be in person in a conference and that’s just always going to be true and we want to be able to program for them too. So, how are we tackle that we will have to see, but it’s definitely something that’s on our radar, as we think about what’s in person and what’s virtual. That’s a lot of work, as you know, because you run the Firebrand community conference, or you helped to run this Firebrand community conference and yeah, it’s a million moving parts and it’s everyone’s expectations.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah, it definitely is. And, and I think you’re, you hit the nail on the head, too. We called it the “Community Conference” originally, I think the first one was 2008, because community is so important in the publishing industry and you mentioned earlier, this is a small industry, this really isn’t nearly as big as some people might think and knowing people having those relationships and connections to other people who do the same kinds of things you do, it makes a huge difference in like, you saw how you can get connected into the industry and get your next job even—and where you land when you’re looking for something new, but also just being able to learn what someone else is up to and, and how another company is handling a very important issue that you’re running into. And this is why IBPA, and the Book Industry Study Group, organizations like that are so important, because you can learn so much about what other people are doing without it being competition. It really is just about community, it’s about building that relationship with other people, and being able to work together on the issues where we need to work together so that we can make success across the board for the whole industry and I think that’s extremely important.

Angela Bole 

I love that. You know, we’re moving into a different role, but that idea of collaborative work community, it’s just ingrained. I have done association work almost my whole life so this idea that we can accomplish this stuff together if we really work together to get it done and we’re always gonna have things that are on the edges where it is competitive advantage and you really want to, you know, acknowledge, honor, and respect that area but there is so much that we can do that is outside of that, that would help all of us. Our old—or our current board chair—as of today it’s her last day—Karla Olson for Patagonia Books says it’s not like we’re making hangers, to hang my coat on this hanger I don’t need another hanger, I’ve already got my coat hung, it’s done. But with books, you know, if I read a book on World War II, when I love it, I’m gonna want another book on World War II, and you’ve probably heard Karla give this analogy before—and I think that’s true so we can—a rising tide can lift all ships and in many cases, not all, but I think we should focus on the cases in which it does,

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. And benefit from the work that other people are doing and help them benefit from the work that we’re doing in such a way that we can, as an industry approach issues like accessibility. And, you know, there’s a lot of talk about Open Access and the academic side of the industry and there’s discussions about DEI, there’s all of these things that we as an industry can be addressing, in a positive way, without it necessarily encroaching on that competitive advantage that we have, or the issues that we’re specifically focused on whatever company we are in.

Angela Bole 

That’s right. And then—you know, nail that competitive advantage as well—let’s not forget that that’s really important but those things that you just identified there, the accessibility, the Open Access, the DEI issues, those in particular are ones that, as an industry, we can really work strongly together to kind of push through some of those barriers.

Joshua Tallent 

Yeah. So I’m gonna back up a little bit in the conversation—but for people who may not know very much about how independent publishing works, and maybe they’re on the traditional publishing side, and they’re not as familiar exactly, what is independent publishing? And how do we define that?—let’s put a little definition around what you would define as independent publishing or what IBPA defines it as—and you mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of different even different types of—pricing models, or you can call it business models, I guess, around this, around independent publishing. So how would IBPA define independent publishing?

Angela Bole 

I’m laughing because I will leave this job after nine and a half years, and I will still not be able to answer that question completely at all, and you know, IBPA is going to do probably a better job than Angela Bole is going to do, because it’s just so nuanced and strange. But, you know, I mean, anything outside the conglomerate, anything that is not traded on the stock market, anything that might be Mom-and-pop kind of thoughts, you know, if it’s owned by family, if it’s owned by a small group of people—you know, we’ll have association presses, we consider those—they’re in membership, university presses are in membership. And there’s a lot of great association presses that are putting out a lot of, you know, and university presses as well, larger independents like a Sourcebooks, Lerner, or Llewellyn, mid-size—and then the tiniest, smallest, “I just published my memoir” or self-published author—and then within there, as we said, there’s so many different business models. And one of the things that’s been interesting about IBPA is we don’t discriminate against size nor business models so if you are independently publishing, you can be a member of IBPA, which means that our membership does stretch from the one book self published author, it’s very different kind of constraints and also interests, you know, for getting involved in the publishing industry, all the way up to the larger independent presses that are, you know, really can rival some of the Big Five in terms of what they’re doing—and what they’re putting out. So what is an independent publisher?—it is a multi headed beast that is filled—I mean, this part of the industry is, again, filled with a lot of creativity. People just come up and it’s funny sometimes to watch people because they’ll come up and they’ll be like, I just discovered independent publishing and we’re like, okay, it’s been here a minute but, you know, and all of these things, we’re kind of rediscovering and discovering them over and over. But that was such a non-answer that I just gave you but that’s how I feel about it. It’s got so many layers—and everybody does something a little bit different and then they say, no, no, but I’m different. And then I say, no, no, no, you need great content, you need to design it appropriately, you need to price it appropriately, you need your metadata to be completely on point, you need to have distribution and sales channels that reach the right markets. The basic thing that we’re all doing here is exactly the same—everybody in independent publishing is like, I’m very different, I’m an outlier, you know?—So yeah, that’s my “Thank God, I’m leaving this job” answer to that question.

Joshua Tallent 

Well, that’s interesting, too, because when I was on the board, one of the things that we worked on at a working group, working on defining standards around independent publishing, and I think that’s one of the great things that IBPA has done is to say things like that, you know, you still need to have standards around design and around editorial and around production and these other things that help anybody again, from that very small independent publisher who is publishing one or two books to the very large, independent publisher and the Big Five, and Big Four pretty soon, you know. Everybody needs those standards and those help us as an industry define what publishing is, not necessarily what independent publishing is and those don’t constrain necessarily, they are really about helping standardize things to make things easier, make the processes run better—and I think that’s one of the things I’ve really appreciated about that working group and about the work of IBPA, is coming up with those standards, allowed the conversation to really solidify, know how can we define better what the standards can be? And therefore, how to help everyone, you know, hit that rising tide so that they can be lifted?

Angela Bole 

Absolutely. And you know, the reader competence is huge—and I think that working at BISG so long helped me to have a standards oriented mind frame when I came in IBPA. So I like rogue things, I like people, you know, shaking the trees, but I also am pretty rote, I like to understand where the edges are and I want to say if I’m going to break this rule, I actually really want to know what the rule is first, and then I want to understand why I’m breaking it. So I’ve got a, you know, for better or worse, I think along those lines, but the reader competence is huge. For so long people, readers, were saying I don’t like independent published books, they don’t look good, they don’t read well, they’re not interesting. And, of course, they look good and they read well, and they’re interesting, if you’re doing it, if you’re publishing professionally—you have to kind of know the rules and follow the rules. In some cases.

Joshua Tallent 

That makes sense. All right, we’re out of time. Angela, you want to tell people where they can follow you online and where they can learn more about the work of IBPA?

Angela Bole 

Absolutely. And that went fast. IBPA is online at ibpa-online.org. And you can reach us there, you can info at ibpa-online.org. If you want to send an email to the general office, you will find the staff to be 100% available as humans to you. So if you’re interested in knowing anything, and you call the office, someone will pick up the phone and will talk to you personally about this industry, this business and why  the heck are we all doing this? They’ll we happy to talk to you so please feel free to reach out.

Joshua Tallent 

Definitely. And I’ll put a link in the show notes. Thanks, Angela. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us today and—yeah, looking forward to seeing you move into the Firebrand Group next year. That’s gonna be exciting.

Angela Bole 

Very exciting. Cannot wait. Thanks, Joshua. I appreciate it.

Joshua Tallent 

That’s it for this episode of the BookSmarts Podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please leave a review or rating in Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast, and also please share the podcast with your colleagues. If you have topic suggestions or feedback about the show, you can email me at joshua@firebrandtech.com. Thanks for joining me getting smarter about your books.