Episode 60: CoreSource & the Future of Book Distribution with Marit Vagstad

Marit Vagstad has worked in the book publishing industry for more than 20 years in marketing, sales, and product management roles. She currently is the Director of CoreSource, Ingram Content Group’s digital distribution solution and manages teams responsible for Key Account Management and Product Success.

She joined us on the Booksmarts Podcast to discuss the pivotal role CoreSource plays in data distribution, the evolving challenges in metadata management, and how Ingram is leveraging technology to help publishers thrive amid rapid changes in discoverability and accessibility.

To learn more about Ingram CoreSource, visit their website.

Digital Transcript

Joshua Tallent
So this week on the BookSmarts podcast, I have the opportunity to talk to Marit Vagstad, who is the director of CoreSource at Ingram Content Group. CoreSource, if you don’t know, is Ingram’s digital distribution solution. And Marit has been with the company for a little while and has been in the industry forever, I guess so. Marit, thanks for joining me on the call. Thanks for having me, Josh, yeah, it’s great to talk to you. Let’s, let’s actually start off with a little bit of your background, just a little history, kind of, where you got, how you got involved in in publishing and and your background in that, and what your role is really in helping with CoreSource.

Marit Vagstad
Sure, to go, I guess, all the way back. I was a English and Communication Studies major that needed to make that into a career somehow. And I also had a hankering to get out in Minnesota and go to New York. So publishing seemed like a good idea. Classic story, yep, like a lot of people, I did the NYU publishing, you know, summer program the summer I graduated, you know, it was right after 911 so not a great job market, but ended up getting a job at Harper Collins in marketing not too long after that. It took a little bit, but, um, you know, kind of did, had a couple of was at Harper first four years, bounced around marketing, went up to Boston. It was at Houghton Mifflin for a little bit, and then ended up back in New York, back at a Harper Collins, and had switched into sales at that point. So I was in international sales there for a little bit, and then I made a leap out of trade publishing, and went into academic publishing. So I, I took a role in, like the humanities and social science space, first at Palgrave Macmillan, and took a sales role there, and sort of through many years and mergers and acquisitions, ended up in the Springer nature world. So until a couple of years ago, I was the trade sales director there for the Americas, and also had a lead on their global e retail business. So, you know, saw the kind of the whole research publishing world for a good amount of time, was a client of Ingrams. And then a couple of years ago, this CoreSource opportunity popped up, and I came over to Ingram to kind of run the commercial team that was selling core sources of service, and this year, also took over the product team, so I’m now responsible for that business. So you know, if I’ve had a lot to learn, but it’s been fun, kind of seeing the business from the other side. Yeah, that’s

Joshua Tallent
Great. I always love it when someone who is in the digital services side of publishing has had that background, you know, it’s, it’s great to, you know, have that background in publishing, be able to see where things are, what are people actually trying to do, dealing with the day to day stresses. That’s really great. So it’s cool that you’re, you’ve moved into the CoreSource side. I would love, and I know other people listening would love to hear kind of how CoreSource fits. Ingram is this big behemoth. Almost seems like a black box sometimes to those of us on the outside. So how does CoreSource fit into the whole Ingram content group, ecosystem?

Marit Vagstad
Great question. Yes, Ingram can be a little bit complex to wrap your head around, even especially when you come in from the other side. But CoreSource, if you don’t know, it’s a digital distribution software product. So what it does, in a nutshell, is it takes in content files and metadata, and it helps disseminate it into the market, so on to channel partners, Discovery Channels. It can also send it on to other Ingram lines of business. So, you know, it is basically publishers log in, they store their books within a in an ecosystem, and can distribute as they need to today. CoreSource has a few core functions within the Ingram world. But I would say also, like our key strategy is really, you know, plugging all of our business areas even more closely together. So a lot of the improvements in our like roadmap have to do with, you know, making sure that we’re really supporting publishers distribution needs holistically, and doing that in a more simplified way, rather than working with us through so many diverse services. So I think you will see Ingram over time, have our businesses be even more complimentary, but back to CoreSource. It is the way our distribution businesses. So we have five full service distribution brands, four in the US, one in the UK, that manage fulfillment and sales functions, sales and marketing. Functions for the publishers that use those services. So CoreSource is how their metadata gets into the market for so our sales teams have it and can disseminate it where it needs to go, so channels like Edelweiss as well as, you know, ONIX feeds and all of that. So we drive that part of that business.

Joshua Tallent
And that’s for print. Sorry, that’s for print and for ebooks as well for those?

Marit Vagstad
Print and eBooks. So most you we know we have some variation in that, but most come in for print and digital distribution. Holistically, we can also distribute audio, and then we have Spark, which is Ingram’s, you know, small small press and self publishing platform. So that’s a very like kind of more consumer friendly environment. So those those publishers or those authors, they engage in a kind of a closed ecosystem with us that spark controls, but that the fulfillment of their ebooks gets pushed over to CoreSource, and we handle that on their behalf. We do have the capability today to send print files and metadata over to Lightning Source, which is our print on demand facility, and a huge part of our sort of, you know, value add as a company is managing sort of virtual inventory and the ability to sort of use pod as a flexible solution. So CoreSource talks to Lightning Source today, it is a key strategic priority to make that process much more seamless. They’re pretty different systems right now, but like one of our core initiatives that we’re in the scoping phase for right now, we’re planning to sort of share our roadmap end of year and then do the development next year to make that more seamless. So things like block eight, which is the ONIX specifications for POD production, those those components, any of those, like proprietary fields that lightning source depends on. So we’re, we’re in the process of solutioning for that, and then I think, sort of on the wholesale and library distribution side. So Ingram library services and Ingram book company, you know, we have an internal data title system that CoreSource can feed on behalf of our IPs publishers or on behalf of any other publisher that wish to manage metadata through us. So we also connect to like I page, which is how publishers check for books availability. So it’s a pretty interconnected system internally of how all of our products linked together and CoreSource, you know, because of that, just the core need for good metadata and its ability to kind of have, you know, complex distribution rules be tailored to individual channels, it allows us a lot of flexibility and how we use it, and also, I think, how we shape it for the future.

Joshua Tallent
That’s great. So that that helps a lot, helps me understand better how the different pieces fit together. And coursework seems to be kind of central to a lot of this, right? It’s, it’s kind of playing a central role in the data distribution, not just outbound, but even internally, within, within Ingram.

Marit Vagstad
It is, it is pretty central. And I think, you know, I think that’s something that will be even more robust in the future. And I think, you know, internally, we have a joke because, you know, it’s something that everybody uses, but no one really talks about. And one of my missions has been to really talk up CoreSource and make sure everyone’s aware of all of the improvements we’re making and things like that. But we’ve been joking that we have to, like, reposition it as something you not. It’s not something you have to use, it’s something you get to use.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, that’s great. So let’s talk about what you see happening in the market. So you, you’re pretty central to everything that’s going on in publishing. You see all the data flowing even, even for publishers who aren’t distributed by Ingram, there’s still data flowing in, and you still have to kind of address the changes that are happening. So when you’re working with publishers, and you’re talking to publishers, and you’re hearing things that they’re saying, how do you track all that stuff? How do you keep track internally of like, what’s going on in the industry, legislation, things and accessibility changes, and UDR and like all of these different things that are happening. How do you guys manage that internally? What’s the conversation like, and what do you think the future is for Ingram, being able to, especially CoreSource, being able to help publishers manage those changes that are coming?

Marit Vagstad
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m going to answer it in two parts. So I’ll talk about maybe CoreSource independently, and then sort of Ingram holistically second. Um, so CoreSource, you know, I was, I was new in the and, you know, our business had been in a period of transition. We’d had some people leave. We made some major like infrastructure upgrades. So I think when I joined, there was a bit of rethinking that needed to be done. And, you know, I think one thing we really had to think hard about was how we talk to a vast client base, sort of systematically, in a way where we can actually manage the amount of feedback that we were getting. So a little bit of it’s been trying. Trial and error, like and knowing what doesn’t work, or like evaluating what wasn’t working. So I mean, I would say it’s a constant iterative process. What has been very meaningful for the CoreSource team is refining the way we take feedback. So, you know, I have a team of key account managers that have a fair number of client interactions. So we and we have, you know, content, operations, people that service accounts and stuff, and they get a lot of like, requests or ideas that come out of their interactions and meetings. So we have a form that goes over to our product team that captures that so kind of standardizing that we used to actually have a form in our UI, and would sort of push publishers in that direction. But my experience was that was sort of a It was sort of a list where it was hard to make progress on everything, and you didn’t necessarily those weren’t always the most strategic things to make progress on. So it sort of looked like we weren’t doing that much, and we were doing a lot. So we’ve actually kind of, we shut down our external facing thing and really refined our internal process. And then what we’ve done more externally is we’ve put together sort of checks and balances to tag what publishers care about items we know we’re considering doing in terms of development so that we can give them updates on, sort of how we’re looking at those things if they fit into something else we’re doing. We’ve really challenged the teams to think about solutioning to like, is there another way to help a publisher solve something in the interim, if we’re not going to do be able to, you know, make an adjustment to the way our platform works right away. And then we also have been much more sort of committed to sharing our roadmap regularly with clients so they know what we are doing and why. And I think that has helped, from like, at least a development perspective, us take in that feedback and manage it. Obviously, there’s a lot of other feedback to consider, so I know, like, we’re on the BISG board together, for example, but I have been working on strategies to, you know, use things that are coming out of committees big BISG to kind of not only inform CoreSource, but also, like, how do we know Ingram has representation and talk to each other about it? So that kind of filters into the Ingram angle, but I think we really need to know what’s being talked about in the industry and make that a priority. So that’s been something we focused on. We’ve started having some advisory events. So we’re about to have a we had one in New York this last spring, and we’re about to have one in London in a couple of weeks. So that’s been a good way to have a bit of some of our publishers in a room, kind of talking about use cases and needs and trends. We did a Technology Summit over the summer, so that was also a nice way to kind of engage at a slightly broader level with the industry and get some feedback. And then I think the legislative piece, obviously, is like been a very loud piece that’s required a lot of attention of late and probably isn’t going away. And, you know, there’s been a little bit of learning as we go there too. But I think, like, that’s a cross Ingram thing where we’re now, you know, have a working group committed to legislative activity and communication that covers more than a single business to address those things. So I think we’re taking good steps in that direction. And then I guess, just like, more broadly to look at Ingram, I think, you know, our businesses, a lot of them grew up sort of independently of one another, and have been, sort of like linked together. So, you know, we can send files to Lightning Source, and it works very well for some large publishers, but there’s some like side cars and things like that to make it work. And we’re, you know, there’s and there, and we’re pursuing paths to connect business lines. Not only that, business line is like a core, you know, a core priority for the company. So especially as we look like, ways to, like, you know, enrich metadata using AI. Like, we have some internal, you know, teams working on things like that. Now we want those to service our whole organization. So there is a lot more across company collaboration happening in lieu of sort of these shared needs. So I think a lot of that has to do with getting better at data and marketing, and it also has to do with just helping our publishers be successful across Ingram without having to have so many isolated conversations. So there’s a lot of good work underway. We have, like, I sit on a metadata Steering Committee, which has been very helpful in sort of pointing some of these conversations. And I think, you know, there’s plenty to do, but there’s a lot of like, I think the connectivity to each other and like, shared priorities is ultimately what helps drive it.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, that’s really good. And the work that you’re doing to keep publishers not only involved and engaged, engaged in the conversation, but to learn from publishers what they’re seeing. We, we do that all the time at Firebrand as well, but it’s, it’s really important to have that. Input and the fact that you’ve got, you know, events that you’re running and trying to collect in from you know, data, and trying to help people tell you what’s going on, right? If you’re on the front lines, you know they’re gonna, they’re gonna know quick, more quickly than we are, what’s really what they’re seeing or run into the problems. I am kind of curious about what you’re what you’re hearing in general, like, what are the big picture things you feel publishers are struggling with the most, or the the issues that they they question the most, or the things that they’re like? I have no idea where the future lies with this part. What do you think are kind of some of the big, high level topics that that you know, maybe things that Ingram is focusing on and thinking about, obviously, discoverability is a big part of that. But what are some, what are some of the things that you’re hearing publishers talk about that you think, man, if we as an industry want to make progress, we should be thinking about these major issues. Yeah.

Marit Vagstad
I mean, I think ultimately, especially our jobs are really like availability, discoverability. That is what like. That is what everybody, no matter what type of Publisher, what segment cares about. So that’s definitely like at the top of the list. And then how are all of your services, or, you know, enhancements, like leading publishers there. So I think, you know, those that’s sort of the driving, the beacon of where we need to go, is anything that improves availability and discoverability. What publishers care about, they care about that accessibility. I think that’s probably been, until recently, the noisiest topic. And we’ll stay, you know, a topic that comes up, I have to say, London book fair. I didn’t have a meeting where we didn’t talk about accessibility for and we’ve done a number. Of webinars on the subject, and are actually thinking about doing another one, because there is such hunger to, like, understand where we are with that. You know, there was EAA that happened, came into effect in June, but now we have title two in the US coming in the spring. So, like, I think, you know, how do we point publishers in the right direction? How do we sort of take stake of what’s actually happened after some of these legislative things come down the pipe, and then I think there’s other things where we play a part in it, but we’re not like the whole part. So if, like, the European Union, deforestation act, eudr, which is all the buzz right now, like, you know, we can send the metadata, but, like, there has to be metadata to send. So I think, you know, those publishers are really looking for guidance on legislative topics, no matter what they are. So I think that’s not going away, and it’s, I think, incredibly important that we pay a lot of attention to those things right now. And then, I think they’re also paying attention to performance of their list. So how are their sales tracking? We do some managed sales. So we’re really kind of doubling down on how we can give them more insight and more context. I think there’s a lot of you know, it’s not a bad picture for sales in the book market, obviously, like audio is booming. Ebooks are doing okay. Print books are rebounding, but there’s a lot of noise in that. Yeah, like, if you talk publisher by publisher, you don’t always see, like a common picture. And I think publishers really look to someone like Ingram or probably even Firebrand to have sort of a zoomed out view, because you talk to two sides of the industry, and I think, you know, it’s a challenge to own that position and to really have a perspective, but we’re challenging ourselves to have that because publishers really care about things that help them sell books. So I think the last thing I would probably say is marketing and data Ingram is very, you know, investing in marketing and data as a mechanism to help publishers sell more books. And I think a lot of what’s going to come down the pipe from us is going to fall into those two buckets.

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, that’s the thing. Spot on the marketing and data side is something we see all the time. Obviously, accessibility, there’s so many, there’s so many publishers who just struggle with knowing what’s going on, what’s what’s going on the market. How do I even know what decision to make next. So data helps with that. It’s not the end all be all for everything, of course, but having better data helps you understand what’s going on in a way that you can’t see if you’re just kind of going off an anecdotal evidence. So, yeah, it’s very important. So very happy to hear that. All right, if you think about the future you’re thinking about. You know, where you want BISG, for example, to be focusing, or where you think, where you think it. What’s the next big thing? What’s the what’s the big challenge that you think? You know, if you were just going to prognosticate down the road, I think in a year, we’re going to deal with this issue, and nobody’s thinking about it yet, or maybe we’ve heard some, you know, back of the back, back door conversations, whatever things people that are like, I really think, I mean, AI, obviously people are talking about AI. But you know, where we in a year, who knows anything that you’re you’re worried about, or you’re thinking, maybe we should be addressed? Ing this issue that nobody else is really thinking about yet.

Marit Vagstad
It’s a great question. I’m not sure I have a quick answer. Well, I would say that yesterday i i actually had an AI conversation with our CIO that we’re going to make some marketing materials out of, and I asked him a very similar question, but more leaning in on AI. And I thought he had a good answer, which, maybe I’ll share that to start, which, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot going on in our industry right now. There’s a lot of and I think there’s a lot of noise like AI, there’s AI, but it like AI is like 17 plus different things. If we say the word AI, it’s efficiency, it’s like marketing, it’s rights, it’s, you know, do, like, it’s lawsuits, it’s so many things that I don’t know. I’m wondering, like, where all that noise will be in a year, and will we have some clarity, or will it be just as noisy, or even noisier? So I don’t really know the answer, but I guess, like, it’s really hard to keep up with everything at the moment, is what I’m finding and and then at the same time, you’re sort of like, it’s sort of like, you know, you’re watching the same topics come up in just slightly different ways with a lot of nuance. So I don’t know, it’s an interesting time. I think his thing was, there’s a lot of like, need to try right now. So there’s probably going to be a fair amount that gets abandoned. But also, hopefully there’s some successes we learn from. I think, you know, I think there’s lots of it. Like, efficiency is such a loaded word. We all need it. We all want to do more with less. But, like, it’s tricky. So I think that’s also something that I don’t know. I’m just like paying like, what does efficiency really mean? And I think that means something different for different publishers. It means something different even for different parts of Ingram. So I don’t know. I think this quest for efficiency is great, but it’s also, it’s also challenging, and it makes you kind of like, ask people to stretch, and you have to make sure that people are sort of okay, as you ask that of them, yeah, gotten very off track. From what that original question was, that’s

Joshua Tallent
fine. It wasn’t a great question. I but I think, I think you’re right on. I mean, this is a, yeah, a couple of things I would say as well. Like, with AI, we’re getting burned out. I feel like, I feel like everybody’s trying to, you know, we’re trying to use it, we’re trying to figure out what to do with it, but we’re also burned out on, oh, all of the great things you can supposedly do and and yet still not sure about how it’s going to impact so I feel like there’s, there’s a there’s a great AI burnout coming, if it’s not already here, but also down the road with publishers. I what I think we’re going to keep on questioning and worrying about is, what role do we play? What role do publishers play in the greater ecosystem of content and the you know how we have to still keep redefining for for consumers, the value of the book and what a book brings to the table that other media types can’t and that AI can’t bring to the table, right? There’s, there’s still a lot of value in the process of publishing and the thoughtfulness that goes into deciding which books are valuable and should be published. So there’s, yeah, there’s still a lot of that. What’s the value proposition? I think that’s going to keep on getting more and more important as we see more and more AI, and more and more tools and other types of media and all this other stuff kind of coming in, I feel like there’s going to be just more of that. And that’s, that’s where I do think companies like, you know, Ingram and Firebrand, you know, as we as we address the technical issues and the day to day, get the data where it needs to go, kind of things, or the best practices, or the here’s what we’re seeing, and we’re going to try to help you understand it. That’s where I think the value proposition is for publishers to to to work with us, right? To work with companies that are in the midst of all of that, to be able to see, you know what? Ingram has an answer to that question, because they’re not seeing it just from one perspective. They’re seeing all the different publishers, right? They’re able to answer kind of the bigger questions and at least bring some data to the table to help me as a publisher understand where my reaction, what reaction makes sense, or what, you know, proactive approach makes sense in that in that concern,

Marit Vagstad
I totally agree. I think that idea of credibility for publishers too. Like, that’s what they bring to the table, especially, like, you know, I came out of research publishing most recently. So like, the peer review process is so essential to everything, and that like stamp that something you know is credible and a balanced opinion, and all of that, like, is a differentiator, but there’s so much noise in this world. So like, I think that publishers should really, like, feel proud and double down on that, that idea that, you know, they are public, there’s a process and sort of, and I think that doesn’t mean that there’s not space for self publishing, and, you know, like other other forms of publishing, because I think that’s what’s kind of great about technology in the world. Old, it’s given, you know, us access to so much great information, and it doesn’t have to come through such a narrow silo anymore. But I also think that’s probably a huge challenge for the industry going forward, is catalog integrity and like how, especially for like services like ours, where we funnel a lot of content out into a broader market. Like, what, what parameters, the parameter like, you want to draw parameters, but then you don’t. So I think what those parameters are, and how that evolves with all sorts of new publishing models, and all of the things AI is capable of, and just like the speed of information, I think that’s like one of the going to be one of the hardest things for, you know, many people, especially that are in, like the sort of the supply chain, is, how do we keep the catalog, you know, quality high, and make sure that reading remains as enjoyable as it is, or as informative as it needs to be, and that People do have information to, you know, like true art or true research, or whatever it is, depending on the type of publishing it is,

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, definitely. Well, this has been great. I like too in the cut with other people who are thinking about stuff like this. So it’s great to have a conversation with you. I really appreciate you taking some time. Merritt, and this is a, you know, there’s always, you know, there’s always more to learn. There’s always more things to do Ingram’s right in the middle of everything. CoreSource, obviously right in the middle of Ingram, in some ways. So really appreciate you taking some time to explain to the audience here, kind of what you guys are up to, and to put some thought into, into where you think things are going. Thanks for joining me. Thanks so much for having me. It was really fun. Yeah, is there anything, any place you think people should be paying attention, you know, where should they learn more about what CoreSource is up to, or anything you think they should be, you know, places they should go. We’ll put a link in the show notes for anything that you they tell us here, yeah,

Marit Vagstad
We have a landing page on the Ingram website. So that’s a great place to get started. There’s a way to contact my team there, so we’ll definitely share that out. You know, we have blogs and things where we put out into the world too, within the Ingram environment. So we try to be active in that, you know, we try to contribute something to all of Ingram’s newsletters that go out. We have this something called publishing forward. You know, I think we could do more on LinkedIn, but I think you’ll probably start seeing a bit more from us there, so feel free to connect. But

Joshua Tallent
Yeah, cool. Very good. Well, thanks a lot. And, yeah, we’ll, we’ll definitely bring you back on some time to talk about what’s what’s coming next in the in the future.

Marit Vagstad
Sounds great. Appreciate it. Josh, yeah, so

Joshua Tallent
That’s it for this episode of the book smarts podcast. If you like what you heard, we appreciate it when you give us a review or a rating on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast, and if you have any suggestions or you know topics conversations you want us to bring on here at the show, you can email me at joshua@firebrandtech.com thanks for joining us and getting smarter about your books.