The 20 Habits of Successful Independent Publishers

Over the years my work at IPG has given me experience with more than 500 different indie publishing companies ranging in size from very small to quite large. I am also the founder of a prosperous mid-sized house, Chicago Review Press, which now publishes 60-70 new titles a year.

In this post I make some observations about the way the most successful independent publishers tend to conduct their business. My list is no doubt idiosyncratic, biased, and incomplete. The point is to stimulate some new thinking and, more importantly, to suggest that indie publishing is unique from what big publishers do, and for that matter, quite unique from how standard business is practiced.

Business Strategy

	Successful indie publishers spend very little time thinking about how the industry should function or talking to people who do. Instead, they thoroughly learn how the business actually works and how to prosper within it.
	They focus on a niche, but they are always looking for new, or better yet, related ones, because they know that the half-life of a particular niche may only be about 2.5 years or less.
	They attempt to sell their books into many markets, be the market trade, or library, or gift, or special sales, rather than relying on only one. They create electronic editions of every title they publish. They want a lot of baskets, even if they have only a few eggs.
	They develop a business plan, a set of goals, even a mission statement; but they nimbly alter any of these (perhaps not the mission statement) when circumstances change.
	They keep their fixed overhead as low as they possibly can. They make use of freelancers and outside services whenever the price and quality are reasonable. They hire additional staff only as a last, desperate, measure.
	They use consultants only when they need solutions to very clearly identified business problems. They know Mother is cheaper for sympathetic hand-holding.
	They never tell anyone that their author will be on a big national TV show or that their book is going to be a major motion picture until the show is in the can or the filming has commenced.
	They never bet the company on any one book. They understand that the first requirement for success is to be able to stay in the game, and that staying in the game brings experience, contacts, and reputation—advantages that cannot be gained in any other way. They don’t imagine they are in the bestseller business.

The Books

	Successful indie publishers only publish books that are rich in content. They know that the books with strong content are the ones that can perform as backlist, and that strong backlist is the sine qua non of successful independent publishing.
	They have special access to the information needed to make their books content-rich—years of personal involvement in a subject area, a close relation to a special-interest publication, a means of identifying individuals especially qualified to write books for a particular niche—some special advantage or edge.
	They work with their authors to deliver manuscripts shaped for very particular audiences, and they don’t hesitate to push their authors until they get what that target audience needs. They know that for every book that fails because the audience is too narrow, hundreds fail because the audience is too broad.
	They always have their book covers and interiors designed by professional book designers, even if they have a niece who went to art school.
	They understand how to wisely conduct market research. Instead of wasting funds on focus groups and other auxiliary market research, they focus their efforts on their consumer audience and conducting competitive research of similar titles to gain a firm grasp of how their book is unique to the marketplace.
	Their books are very cleanly designed, copy-edited, and typeset, but they never ask their customers to pay extra for a level of quality that is not wanted: for instance, 80lb paper or a sewn binding in a book that will only be read once or just a few times.
	They put an enormous amount of time into imagining the ideal realization of each book so the finished product is harmonious and (this is the really hard part), somehow, exactly right for the book’s subject and intended audience. They spend a lot of time in bookstores looking over the merchandise with a skeptical eye.
	They don’t think for a second that publishing a title as an eBook somehow makes strong content and excellent design irrelevant.

Ethical Considerations

	Successful indie publishers treat their employees with unusual care and consideration, because they know a productive employee at an independent press could earn a higher salary working in a different industry—almost any other industry.
	They remember that the publishing community is small and that their reputation will precede them. They under-promise and over-deliver.
	They understand the power of the printed word and that what they do as publishers can have a cultural influence, for good or ill, completely out of proportion to the dollars generated by their books or the number of copies sold.
	They are serious people, well worth knowing.

Curt Matthews
CEO, IPG/Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

Curt Matthews is the founder and CEO of Chicago Review Press, Incorporated, which is the parent company of Chicago Review Press and of Independent Publishers Group (IPG), the first independent press distributor and now the second largest. Curt has served on the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) board and has also served as its president.

Comments (11)

Justin McLachlan says:

Jun 20, 2012

Great list and some real good advice! I think number one is particularly apt, in my experience.

Curt Matthews says:

Jun 21, 2012

Thank you for the kind words. I agree that number one is a really big one.

Gwen Henson says:

Jun 20, 2012

A well-considered list of traits for successful publishers. Thanks for sharing this, Curt! You are a gem in our industry.

Curt Matthews says:

Jun 21, 2012

Thank you for your comment. Looking over the list I had a new thought. Publishers who succeed somehow combine a lot of idealism with a hard-headed business approach. Not easy.

Tim Schaffner says:

Jun 25, 2012

Thanks, Curt, for the inspiration and affirmation! It does me proud to be an indie!

Larry Fine says:

Jun 27, 2012

Curt, I’m really pleased to have been associated with IPG for 25 years. You run an awesome company!

Inkcollector says:

Jul 15, 2012

I am planning to start an indie publishing house of my own next year. And this article has given me so much guidance and motivation, it is almost unreal. Very grateful, indeed.

Curt Matthews says:

Jul 23, 2012

Dear Inkcollector,

When you have firmed up your plans and know what you are going to publish, give me a call.

LittleDropsofPoetry (@DropsofPoetry) says:

Jul 27, 2012

This is a really well written article. I wish it had a section for authors though and their perspective. Also some links to tools to accomplish the strategy tasks would be super great. Thanks again, this one is definitely bookmarked!

Jeanne Devlin says:

Aug 15, 2012

You literally covered ever point that we attempt to honor at our small house — but it means so much more to hear someone with your experience say that they are the right things to focus on. Thank you — I’m sending this to others in the company right now. It’ll give everyone a boost!

Kylie Brandon says:

Oct 16, 2018

Thanks for sharing your post.its really amazing advice for starting the career in publishing.