AN OVERVIEW OF IPG MARKETING SUPPORT

NO IPG CLIENT PUBLISHER is assigned a contact person. Instead, every IPG publisher has direct access to the person or persons at the company best qualified to provide information or consultation on any particular issue. A listing on the publisher section of the IPG website keeps an up-to-date list of these contacts.

The IPG staffers have monitored the success of a great many titles in many markets. Over the years they have developed clear ideas about what works and what does not. They have access to IPG's own sales data, and also to sales data from all of the major accounts in the book market. Calls from publishers are taken immediately if possible or are quickly returned by the IPG staff. The answers they provide are well grounded in experience and research.

Moreover, the IPG marketing department provides, as a matter of course, sophisticated feedback on new titles in process-or even contemplated-by its distributed publishers.

For instance, almost all of IPG's client publishers send, electronically, proposed cover images, titles, and price points for each season's list well before the books have gone to press. At least six or eight senior members of the marketing staff carefully examine and discuss these images, titles, and prices, and the results of this process are communicated clearly to each publisher.

Many publishers come to the IPG office once or twice a year to review their upcoming titles, and ways to support their backlist, with the full IPG marketing staff. These discussions range from very general ideas about trends in the book business to solutions to particular problems of marketing and design.

IPG of course does not insist that its advice be taken, but its client publishers (including those who have published many titles over many years) are unanimous in their view that this feedback from the IPG marketers allows them to refine the presentation of their titles and to sharpen up the focus of their publishing programs overall.