Today we’re joined by Christopher Locke, Director of Membership & Member Services at the Independent Book Publishers Association.

The indie publishing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and IBPA’s resources have helped educate authors and hold publishers to clear standards of professionalism. In this episode, we’ll talk about how joining a publishing association can give authors more agency and provide access to tools for greater visibility.

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Have a book you want to publish? Submit your book: greenleafbookgroup.com/submissions

More about IBPA: ibpa-online.org

Automatically generated transcript:

Welcome to Published, a podcast by Greenleaf Book Group, where we'll discuss the ins and outs of the publishing industry, from writing a book and finding the right publisher, to gearing up for a book launch. And now, here's your host, Greenleaf Book Group CEO, Tanya Hall.

Welcome back to Published. Today, we're joined by Christopher Locke, Director of Membership and Member Services at the Independent Book Publishers Association. In addition to supporting thousands of independent authors and publishers through his work at IBPA, Christopher also hosts the podcast, Inside Independent Publishing, where he shares insights and updates from across the publishing world. The indie publishing landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and IBPA's resources have helped educate authors and hold publishers to clear standards of professionalism. In this episode, we'll talk about how joining a publishing association can give authors more agency and provide access to tools for greater visibility. Please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. It means a lot to have your feedback and it helps us to make sure we're answering your publishing questions. Now, let's dive into the interview. Christopher, welcome to Published.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate having you here. I really genuinely am grateful to be here and also you all are members of IBPA, so thank you for being part of the community.

Absolutely. Yeah, we are long time members at IBPA. So we're going to get into what that means for authors and publishers. So why don't we kick off by having you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do there.

Yeah, thank you. So I'm the IBPA Director of Membership and Member Services. So everything from we have benefits for members. I'll get into that a little bit later. So I'm in charge of making sure we get the best ones. And then I'm in charge of recruiting members, as well as we have current members, of course. And we need to always make sure that we're meeting their needs. So that's important to me. I really enjoy working at IBPA because I'm also an author publisher. So we have independent publishers, author publishers, authors. I mean, we have tons of different types of members. And every day I learn things about publishing and things I wish I had known when I first published my first two books and I'm like, oh, okay, well, better next time. You know, like, what are you going to do?

Hindsight's 2020, right?

Yeah.

Well, for those who are unfamiliar with IBPA, can you start off by telling us about the organization, the role it plays in industry, the services that you provide for members, that type of thing?

Of course. Yeah. So we are a trade association. So our job is basically to help independent publishers. And I'm using that term broadly so that I'm saying that includes author publishers that are people that self-publish books, and then independent publishers who publish other people's books. So we help them succeed in publishing. And I would put it into four different categories. So the first one I would say is networking. This is something that if you are a publisher, like one of the best ways to learn about publishing is talking to other publishers. They're already doing what you're doing. And if you're starting out or if you've been publishing for years, there are things that you're dealing with that other publishers are also dealing with. Let's say like distribution. You might go to them and say, I'm having trouble with my distributor. How is your distributor? And then you all just talk about that. So we have a lot of different opportunities for that. We have educational content. We have webinars that teach people about publishing. But then we also have an in-person conference every year. I don't know about you, but I've found that webinars, things online are great. But there's something about the magic of in-person where you're talking to people, and then you can follow up. And also honestly, it's casual too. When you do things online, it feels almost transactional, like, what can you do for me? And whereas in-person, you're like, what do you have for lunch? And then that builds a little bit of a relationship. And then there's book marketing programs. When you publish a book, you want to sell your book. So it can be quite difficult to get into certain markets. So we've found ways to help publishers get into libraries, bookstores, get reviews, things like that. And then the last one is we have a lot of companies that give our members discounts. We've gone out and found some of the biggest publishing companies in the world, such as like IngramSpark, Balker. That's where you get your ISBNs, Kirkus Reviews, FedEx, places that every publisher uses and our members, when they're a member, get a discount on their services. Again, I wish I had known about IBPA when I started because I've used all those different services and I'm like, I could have saved some money, but I now am a member as an employee. So I'm taking advantage of it now.

Yeah, and I'll give a little plug also for the conference because it is probably one of the best publishing industry conferences, especially for people who are just kind of learning the ropes. There's just there's so many different tracks that you can take in terms of how you pick your classes and which areas you really want to grow and learn about. So you all do a wonderful job with that conference each year.

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's fun because we don't get to see the members sometimes. Sometimes it's just emails. So what I love is in person, you're talking to someone and you go, oh, oh my gosh, we've emailed so many times. It's great to meet you in person. So I like that part of it.

Great. When you're talking about independent publishers and authors, how are you defining that in the publishing world, I suppose?

So basically, it's everyone who's not like the big five publishers. So Simon Schuster, Penguin Random House, all the big five. If you're publishing any other way, we would consider you an independent publisher or an author publisher. Some people call them self-published authors, but we use the term author publisher because if you're doing it right, you're not doing it by yourself. You should not be designing your own book cover, if that's not your trade. If you wouldn't have someone else pay you to do the cover. I know it's difficult to get money to pay for some of these things, but your passion is creating these books, so you want them to be the best they can be.

I really like that distinction. If you're doing it right, you're not doing it yourself. Because yeah, I would be pretty unusual person who can write the book, design the book, market the book, distribute the book, and do all those things well in a way that does the book justice. So that was the pull quote, I think.

You all are an amazing company that you are experts, right? You have a team of people that has been doing all of the work that you all do for years. So if you're any publisher or an author publisher, you may have a wonderful idea for a book, but that doesn't mean that you then know all the details. So they come to people like you all who are experts, and they can use that to their advantage.

If somebody is in the early stages of just starting to think about writing a book, is that the type of person that should be thinking about potentially looking at IBPA, maybe going to the conferences? When's the ideal time for them to begin to get involved?

Yeah. Well, obviously, I have a vested interest as the director of membership. Every human in the world should be a member. So I mean, I'll tell you from personal experience, like I said, you don't know what you don't know, especially if you're thinking about being an author publisher, and if you're thinking about starting a publishing company, you know, I really think that you just need to start filling your brain with knowledge. You just need to read everything you can and understand all the different aspects of what you're about to get into. So for the educational purposes, definitely, I would start sooner than later. Even as you're writing a book, if you're like an author publisher, you should really be thinking about marketing. You need to start doing that sooner than later. And so, you need to understand marketing. Even if you're going to decide to hire someone to help you, you want to know what they're going to be doing. And they might suggest things where you go, oh, I read it, I don't want to do that or whatever. Sooner than later, just for the educational purposes and then the networking, you want to make sure that you're right from the get-go out there, talking to other people, doing what you're doing, learning from their mistakes. And also, they'll have really awesome opportunities. They'll go, have you used this? And then you go, I didn't even hear that. Especially as a writer, it can be very solitary. And then you don't ever interact with anyone, and so then you end up not understanding what other people are doing. And I really hope that people kind of break out of that.

And you mentioned kind of this overarching mission of helping authors succeed. And I think historically, independent authors, publishers, self-publishers, whatever you want to call them, I think one of their major roadblocks has been distribution, getting into retail. So can you talk a bit about any programs or tools IBPA can offer on that front?

I'll start with what I think are really good markets. So libraries are overlooked in terms of a place to sell your books. I think sometimes we have people come to us, especially newer people, that say, well, why would I want to go put my book in a library? Because then, you know, all these people will get it for free. It doesn't work like that, where, you know, a library pays a certain amount for your book. And a lot of times, the price will be more than the retail price. And so every time that someone's checking out the book, then, you know, you got a certain amount for it. You want to keep in mind that they're now learning about you as an author or as a publisher. And especially if you have other books, you know, then they may go out and buy the book. I mean, there's a lot of research done where people who go to libraries, they buy books. They read a book and go, I love this book. And they will either buy it for themselves, for their home library, or they'll buy it for a friend or they'll buy it for a family member. So definitely libraries are a good market. We have two programs specifically for libraries. So every year there's a thing called the American Library Association Conference. It normally happens in June. So that's a really great place to get your books right in front of librarians. Literally thousands of librarians go. If you go in person, you can do an author signing at our booth, and then you'll get a chance to meet the librarians. But you don't have to go in person. We can represent your books for you. I understand it can be quite costly to travel. Then there's the library e-blast that we have that go out to 5,000 librarians. Another good market is consumers. You should be selling directly to the actual readers, especially author publishers and maybe small indie publishers. So we have multiple programs for that. Ingram ID has Google, Facebook, and Instagram advertising, Crave Books, newsletters. Then NetGalley is a really huge program, one of our most popular that you can have books posted on NetGalley, and then people will download them and they'll leave reviews. And reviews are really great to inspire people to read books. Can I tell two things that I don't think are good markets?

That's fun.

So bookstores is a very difficult market to break into, especially if you're like a debut author or, you know, no one's heard of your book. Don't take it personally. I think people think that they're not supporting indies, and they could do more about that. But I will say, if you're a bookseller, you have literally limited space in your store to put books as compared to an online retail store. So you need to have books on the shelf that people are going to walk in that door and they're going to buy them. And they're not trying to stop you from being a successful author. They literally need to make money to stay in business. So if people walk in that door, they've never heard of you as an author. They've never heard of your book. They're just probably not going to buy it. So it's your job as the publisher and the author to get the word out enough that people are actually asking the bookstore, hey, I really love to buy this book. I don't see it here. And the more they hear about it, then they will carry it. So it's actually the opposite way, right? Like you don't just go right to a bookstore and say, carry my book. So people hear about it, tell people about your book, and then the bookstore will carry it. The other one is the international market. It just can be difficult when you're first starting out. So I just want to make sure people don't waste their money. IBPA has programs for bookstores, has programs for the international market, especially if you're just starting out, I wouldn't start with those. I would start with libraries, I would start with our consumer programs. You're going to have more luck. And I know for me, especially with like bookstores, you have this thought in your head. You're so excited. I want to see my book in Barnes and Noble. And it is an exciting opportunity to think about that. But you're going to waste time really hard trying to get it in there and maybe not even get it in there. And then you could have been spending that time selling books to consumers, making more money and not being so frustrated.

Yeah, that's an excellent point. And and I love the way you framed that because you're absolutely right in terms of retail distribution. Of course, Greenleaf is a distributor. So we know this very well. Why doesn't drive book sales? Demand does. And that's what you were getting at there. And I think a lot of people overlook the fact that books are sold returnable. And you know, very often when I have this first conversation with especially my business authors, they're just scratching their heads going, what, what industry does that? But that creates a very, very interesting dynamic when it comes to getting books into stores. Because yes, it creates a little bit of opportunity for the author because, you know, in theory, the retailer isn't taking as much of a risk if they can return it. But at the same time, it can undo a sale in a costly way for both the author and the distributor. So we're trying to avoid returns and make sure that that demand is there so that the supply and demand meet at the right time when the author is in the store and we get a sale that sticks, if you will. There's two sales that have to happen, right? Get it into the store and then get it into the consumer's hands. That's a tricky thing to achieve.

Yeah, and I bet your people that are like your business leaders that are writing books to you all probably sell more books, you know, at like speaking engagements and places where they're going to talk and people are specifically going to see them because they've heard of them before versus walking into a bookstore and seeing their book randomly on some shelf.

Absolutely. So we live in an interesting time for publishers, a lot of new developments. You know, AI comes to mind, but there are lots of shifts in our industry at any point in history. But it seems like in the past several years, there are more. So can you speak to that a bit about what you're seeing that authors and publishers are maybe paying attention to now, that our listeners should also be looking at, or shifts in how you're serving your members?

Well, you mentioned AI. So that's the hot topic right now. Everybody's talking about it. So I mean, there are challenges and opportunities to it. So I'd say the challenge with it is that more and more books are being created that are AI and they're just like flooding the market, like on places like Amazon and whatever. Some of these retailers aren't really paying attention as much, or maybe they don't know how to get to understand what books are being posted on their sites. And either sometimes they're like direct rip offs of other books, or they're literally just random. They're not very good. And so it's a shame and we got to find a way to better weed them out. But that's a problem. That said, AI can be helpful. Personally, I wouldn't use it to relate it to my actual book, especially with marketing materials. You can help you create maybe a really good description that has great SEO, great keywords, can help you create social media posts, things like that. Can help you with all that extra stuff that takes a different brain in terms of marketing versus if you're writing like a fiction book and you're a great storyteller, that's very different from then knowing how to, you know, make a post that's going to do really well. Another really good opportunity that's happened, you know, and it keeps getting better and better is Print On Demand. So I'm sure you remember, you know, people used to get printers to print like 5,000 copies of their book. And what a disaster it ends up just sitting in their, you know, garage. And then they lost all kinds of money and they're frustrated. And then they think no one likes their book. So Print On Demand is where, let's say like Ingram Spark, if somebody buys a book from bookstore, a lot of times they'll have printing through Ingram Spark. And they'll literally, that book they bought is the one that they now have. It's just printed in that moment. So it's a really great way for you to save money as a publisher and author, also in terms of sustainability, using less paper, less waste. A challenge in general is so many books are being published now. I mean, like millions of books a year. It's just, it's hard to get noticed. It's hard for your one book for people to find out it exists. And they may love it. It may be something that will end up being their favorite book. But how do you find that person with the glut of all the stuff that's out there? I mean, I know when I wrote my books, I was like, it's happened. It finally exists in the world. You know, unless you've done really great marketing, not enough people know that. It's nothing against you. It's not that you're not a good writer, but they literally don't know your book exists. And the first time they hear of it, probably aren't going to buy it immediately. So you have to consistently keep getting it back in front of them.

Absolutely. That is a drum that we are beating all the time. As you might have seen, all of media is a fight for eyeballs, right? But it is particularly pronounced in the publishing space just due to an incredible oversupply. So yes, it is a full-time job, really can be, to get your book out there. But it starts so far in advance of the book if it's done right, of course, and really laying the groundwork and being strategic about how you do that, which you can learn all about in my book, Ideas, Influence and Income.

Awesome. There you go. I love the easy little plug there.

It's the only book with three facings right behind me here for those who are looking at the...

Smart. I like that.

So one major contribution, I think, that's come from IBPA in the past several years is defining what it is to be a hybrid publisher. So I'd love to hear you talk about that, sort of the impetus for it, how you went about setting the criteria and how you've seen that landscape shift in the past several years.

Yeah, it's an interesting business model. So trade publishing, it basic is where like a publisher carries the entire cost of publishing a book. And we've seen more and more, especially with small publishers, it's really difficult to make a living doing that. I know when I started IBPA eight years ago, I was shocked when I started meeting any publishers and I found out that wasn't their full time job. I was like, what, you too? Like, I was like, I'm publishing books, I have a day job, I love it. But the problem was that you need to make money. And so hybrid publishers where like an author will pay for some of the costs of publishing, but they're still a publisher that they're dealing with. And some of the confusion comes in where you have sometimes service providers that then are calling themselves hybrid publishers, but they're really a service provider. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with being a service provider. You can create amazing books using their services, but it's just confusing. So, IBPA created the IBPA Hybrid Publisher Criteria, and it lays out all these different points. For example, a publisher is very selective. They do not publish every manuscript that comes to them. They have a specific publishing program, whereas a service provider, if you give them money, they will help you get your book published. But then you're the publisher, you're an author-publisher then because you're just hiring them to whatever, do the editing or all the other aspects. Something else, you mentioned distribution earlier. So a service provider, they might post your book to IngramSpark or they might post your book to Amazon, but that's it. Like they're not doing anything to actively sell your book. Like we were just talking to the trade market. They're not, they don't have connections to bookstores. They don't have a sales team that's going to specialty stores and getting your books in there. Anyway, there's a whole list, but it's helpful for you, especially the authors out there, to understand who you're working with. And of course, there are some bad actors that are intentionally misleading people that they're a hybrid publisher. But hybrid publishers, it's an absolutely legitimate, great business model, really honestly, keeping some small publishers alive because they just can't afford to cover the full cost of publishing a book. And then the returns on them that aren't enough to then publish the next book. So it's a helpful way to work as a partner with a publisher, as an author.

Yeah, and full disclosure, of course, if people aren't aware, Greenleaf Book Group is a hybrid publisher, arguably the first one. So I asked that question for my own biased reasons, but that list has been super helpful because we've certainly seen all of the confusion of this glut of companies that hang a shingle and say that they're a publisher, a hybrid publisher and really difficult and confusing, I think, for authors to vet who's legitimate and where is it safe to leave your project without getting burned. So it's an important list for sure.

Yeah. If I can mention one more thing. So one of the things that breaks my heart the most is when people come to us that are members and they say, they spent whatever, $10,000, $15,000 or whatever it is, and they don't even have a book yet. And so please do your homework. That's one of the reasons why joining an association is helpful is just start asking. Don't just give someone your money. Ask around first and find out, are they legit, are they good? I don't know what happens. I don't know how they got swindled because pretty much every time they tell me the name of the company, I'll look it up if I haven't heard of it yet. And there'll be like 10 articles, scam, this is not a good company. They took my money and I'm like, did they not do one search like that? So please do your homework. I don't want any more people to get taken advantage of like that.

There are tons of those scam companies out there. And you're right, if you just do a quick Google search, there's a site called WriterBeware that pops up a lot of those, but not terribly difficult to uncover the complaints. And yeah, we're seeing a lot of it with fake film agents that are paying on authors and some very convincing outreach to get them to sign over their rights and ultimately pay money to have an adaptation done or write a screenplay based on it. It's just ridiculous. So yes, do your homework because there are unfortunately bad actors out there. So that's good advice. Now you have an interesting bit of context, I guess, in your experience. You mentioned that you are an author yourself. So you bring that lens as well as, of course, being an employee of IBPA. So I'm curious when you are looking at the industry and maybe changes around the corner, what gets you excited and what are you looking forward to? Or is there anything that you're concerned about? You mentioned the proliferation of AI-generated works. I think we're all concerned about that. But I'm curious how you think maybe publishing will change in the future.

Yeah, so beyond AI, publishers rely on retail sites, Amazon and so on, to sell their books. But there are times when then something happens where they'll get an email out of nowhere that will say, you violate our terms and your book's been removed, or all your books have been removed. I want publishers, and I know IBPA is trying to work on this, I wish we had more protection so that sites where they're making money off of our books. Every time we make a sale on their site, they're making money. So I'd like them to take more seriously that we are people that they need to protect. I don't know how these things get flagged. Why do they suddenly take down all the publishers books? But how about you send an email first that's saying, hey, we're flagging you. We haven't moved yet, but we have whatever these concerns. Because what happens is they just tell you you've already been removed. And then you know what happens is you have no one you can talk to. You email back and it's like an email that's not working. And then you try to find their customer service and you can't connect with anyone. It breaks my heart. All these publishers are like, how do I get in touch with them? Again, that's something that then you can talk to other publishers and see how they worked with. But that's something really concerning that I'd like to see fixed. And then you mentioned it earlier, something I'd really like to see fixed is the returns with bookstores. It's an archaic system. I absolutely love bookstores. It's not against bookstores, but they should just be more careful about how many books they order because the onus normally falls on the publisher to cover the costs. And especially new publishers who don't understand about having capital sitting, you know, in case this happens, suddenly, you know, they get whatever. They sold 5,000 books a year ago and suddenly, you know, 4,500 books are returned. And they're just like, oh my God, I didn't know this was going to happen. You know, so it's bankrupted companies before. So I wish that there was more thought put into exactly how many books they think they're going to sell and they only order that many books. And then we just need to, you know, fix this return problem. I don't know. I mean, you've been in publishing even longer than I have. Do you see any movement toward anybody on that side of things who's like, yep, we do need to fix it?

No, because, and what I've heard when we talk about it in industry circles is it would basically require the entire industry to come together, all publishers at the same time, and agree. We are all going to change our terms to non-returnable. Otherwise, someone has an advantage over the other publishers. So until we can all kind of lock arms together and say, it's time, we're going to do this. And also for the reason I mentioned earlier that you can argue, a debut author has a higher chance of getting in a store if it's returnable. So there's kind of a double-edged sword in terms of the opportunities maybe that a returns policy can present. I will say that, rest in peace, Borders, and I loved Borders as a bookstore, they were probably one of the worst culprits in terms of over-ordering, right? They used to order, great when you're a publisher, but they would order 3,000 or 4,000 units up front. And then sit on those and not necessarily do a lot of reorders, but it was like, okay, 3,000 or 4,000 units are out the door going to Borders. But to your point, yes, if those show up on your warehouse doorstep a year from now and undo the sale for everybody, they're also probably damaged. And I think that other thing that people don't realize is you should be printing extra dust jackets when you go to press so that when they come back and they're torn or scuffed or bent, you can at least re-jacket them and still have a salvageable product. But when Borders went under, we saw a shift really to where Barnes & Noble was making a lot more, I will say conservative buys where you start with a couple hundred units and reorder as needed, which makes incredible business sense. The other outlets that are notoriously, I would say sloppy in their ordering, the airport accounts and we do a lot of business with airports. And just really high return rates, the supply chain is just complicated and long. And so we see some pretty messy returns there. But like you mentioned libraries earlier, people don't have to worry so much about returns with libraries. So you can kind of control it, I suppose, if you're a publisher, just by which markets you're focused on.

Yeah, yeah. And I just wish, look, you know, bookstores don't exist without books. And so I just wish there was more of an effort to, you know, like, work together as publishers. We want them to succeed. So we just want to make sure that, you know, they're thinking about, well, how is this going to impact the publisher if we order this many and then we return X amount? Again, I know they have reasons why they do their things. So, you know, this isn't like to condemn them. It's just to open the conversation. Can we figure this out because this is hurting publishers?

Sure. And I think publishers also should know that they can be empowered often to what we say, the police the buys. So, if you have a sense, Costco used to be this way too. Costco would come in and order 10,000 units. And of course, at first you're like, that's fantastic, 10,000 in Costco. But wow, what a difficult account that is because you mentioned the pressure of making sure whatever is in the store is selling through. It's all palette based there, right? So you've got to be able to churn enough of that retail space that that palette is occupying or they're going to kick it out. So you don't want 10,000 units with this big old Costco sticker coming back to your warehouse. What you can do is police the buy on the front end. And it's counterintuitive, I think, when you're in the business of selling books. But that would look like, can we start it in a test market where it makes the most sense to have high demand, probably where the author is from, see how it does and then broaden it from there. And that would be a way to kind of mitigate your risk a little bit with some of these overbuying accounts, let's say.

Yeah.

So you host a podcast yourself called Inside Independent Publishing. For our listeners who might want to explore that, are there any episodes that you found are particularly resonant for people who are looking to learn more about the industry or ones that you would point them towards?

Really grateful that IBPA lets me as part of my job do something that's so fun. So the Amazon episodes, they're always the ones that people, we have a few that are about how you optimize your book for Amazon. So those are popular. And then as we just talked about, libraries and bookstores are popular. So we have some episodes where I talked to a bookstore, for example, and I just said, give us some tips. What are things that publishers can do? And then I talked to librarians and asked them same thing. And it's helpful to understand what they're looking for from there in, so you can set your books up for success. And then one other one that was really popular was Simon & Schuster. We just talked about the Big Five Publishers. Well, interestingly, they're more and more distributing indie publishers' books. So you can have a book that you published. You're an independent publishing company, but the large publishers are like, oh, wow, that's doing well. So they will then work with you to distribute your titles, and then you can open it up to all kinds of, to their whole market. So I did an episode with a great gentleman who works at Simon & Schuster in that department, and he talked about what they're looking for. So I know that it seems like they're the kind of big bad, successful, whatever, but they're actually working more and more with indie publishers in interesting ways like this. So people might want to check that out.

Awesome. Okay. And you've shared so much great advice today. Any other tips or things that you really hope people will take away and learn about the industry?

Yeah. Well, one of the things that I see all too often is rushing your publication. So I know how it feels. Writing a book can take years and then going through the publishing process can take a year or two. But you're in the industry, you know, there's certain times a year that certain books do well. There are certain things you need to set up like trade reviews, things like that. You need to get your marketing all set up. So I know you want people just to start reading your book, but you are doing such a disservice to your book if you don't get everything ready and then publish it because you can only publish it once. And a lot of times media too is more interested in a book before it's published so they can, you know, be the people to talk about it getting published than a book that's, you know, whatever, 10 years old or a year old even. So please don't rush your publication date. One other thing, I just want to make sure people know this, you know, publishing is a long game as well. So if your book is published and you don't sell 1000 copies in the first year, your book's not a failure. You just got to keep getting the word out. And there are many, many people whose books years down the road, they, you know, and this is the important thing. Keep publishing, keep putting books out there, because maybe your third book does well and that's the one. And then now you have two other books. People go, oh, you know, let me read these other two books. So don't get discouraged and go, well, one book, I'm done. Nobody read it. You know, I'm terrible. Like, please, you're not terrible. Just keep getting the word out. Keep publishing books. The best way to sell a book is to publish another book. I know I was discouraged and I just hope that people, and now I've sold millions of copies. No, I'm kidding. I have nothing. I haven't, but, you know. Yeah. No, but I mean, I just, I just want to make sure people don't get, you know, don't feel like a failure. You're not a failure. That's why talking to other people who have published, you understand, oh my gosh, like we're all in this and we're all kind of struggling a little bit, but we're doing a lot of it for the passion. So just keep at it.

Absolutely. Yeah, we've been at this at Greenleaf for over 20 years, well over 25 years now and 4,500 some odd books that we've published or distributed. Many examples to your point of books that maybe were kind of a sleeper in the beginning and somehow found their footing and, you know, unexpectedly did well for whatever reason, those all different scenarios. So yeah, it's a marathon, not a sprint is the cliche that we use all the time.

Yeah.

And if people want to learn more about IBPA or get involved, where can they do that?

Yeah. So we're ibpaonline.org is our website, and I hope people will become members. It's something that you can really gain a lot of connections with, and then you can also learn a lot. We do a yearly membership, so it's only literally it's $155 a year for author publishers and indie publishers, and that's only $13 a month. So when you break it down like that, for all the knowledge that you gain, I'm hoping that that's like what? Like one coffee now at a coffee place. So I'd like to think we have enough to offer people that they can do that. But once people join, then the most important thing is just start talking to other people, start meeting other people in the community, through our Slack channel, through our member roundtables, and you'll get an opportunity now to just start learning. I've met so many great people. I mean, you all are members, and I meet people like you at the conferences, and Indie Publishing World's really friendly, nice people. Like I came from TV, and they're a little more cutthroat there. So I was like surprised, like why is everyone being nice? What's going on? And I was like, oh, they just are. Okay, that's good.

I also came from TV, so I know what you're talking about.

Oh, yeah, all right.

Absolutely. And yeah, that is a special thing about this industry. There's a certain stewardship that I think we want to have for each other, and authors occupy a very important role in society, and people really care about each other in this industry, and you really get a sense for that at the conference. So I would personally encourage people to definitely try that out, and probably they will save enough in the discounts that you offered to offset that $13 cup of coffee that they're giving up.

Yes. Yeah. Agreed. And look, if you use our programs, you sell more books, and now you're covering the cost of that, coffee and membership. Amazing.

Awesome, Christopher. Well, thank you so much for joining us. You were great.

Yeah. And thank you again for being a member and doing so much in the industry to help keep indie books elevated at publishing professionalism. You helped set the bar.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much. That's all for today's episode. We hope you enjoyed learning about Publishing Associations and the many resources available to indie authors. For more information, please visit greenleafbookgroup.com/episode99. You can also find advice for writing, publishing and promoting your work in my book, Ideas, Influence and Income, which you can learn more about at ideas, influence and income.com. A big thank you to Madison Johnson, who produces the published podcast and to our five star reviewers. Thank you for your support and we will be back with another episode on the last Tuesday of next month.