October 3, 2024 (press release) –
| (0 Comments) Posted by: Adeline Lui
This July 1, IBPA’s Board of Directors welcomed Keith Riegert as one of our newest board members. Keith has deep roots in the publishing business – his dad started Ulysses Press, and Keith worked at Hachette and Ulysses before becoming CEO and also founding Velo Press and Perfect Bound. We chatted with Keith to learn more about his background and how he hopes to serve IBPA members. Hi Keith. We’re so excited that you’ve joined IBPA's board of directors. Tell us a bit about yourself. I am the CEO of Ulysses Press and Velo Press Books, indies that publish a combined 65 titles a year; we are distributed by Simon & Schuster. I am also the CEO of Perfect Bound, a publishing SaaS platform that started out as a two-sided marketplace, think AirBNB, for indie publishers and printers around the world. What issues do you feel strongly about, and hope to make an impact on as a board member? I am a huge proponent of independent publishing and think a lot about the future of the industry. I think independent publishing holds a lot of critical advantages over large legacy publishers at this moment because we are so agile and fast to market. What concerns me most, however, are the roadblocks that continue to stand in the way of upstart publishers. Roadblocks such as...?
This includes access to good, global distribution, a lack of leverage with our printing partners, and limited access to key publishing knowledge—everything from book design and packaging to efficient and effective marketing. I think these barriers keep very savvy and intelligent publishers from being able to grow, and this keeps the balance of power on the side of large corporate publishers. That’s what I am personally seeking to change. To help indie publishers like yourself, you also founded Perfect Bound. It’s a suite of services of sorts, for small publishers. Tell us more. It’s like a suite of services all in one place that includes title management, the printing marketplace, sales and inventory tracking, royalties and rights management and optional distribution provided by S&S. We hear you also wear several other hats in publishing... True, I am also the co-founder of Pacific & Court, a publicity and digital marketing firm for indie publishers and authors. And I teach Analytics and Consumer Insights at NYU’s masters in publishing program.
What has your journey been like getting to where you are today? When I was going to college, my dad, who founded Ulysses in 1983, urged me to go into anything else than publishing. So, I, of course, became an English Literature major and made a beeline straight for it. There was nothing else I could imagine doing. I started as an acquisitions editor at Ulysses in 2008. In 2015, I left to get my MBA at NYU Stern and then worked for Hachette on their centralized marketing strategy department before returning to Ulysses as publisher in 2019. Can you share with our members one key lesson you’ve learned as an independent publisher? Treat your list like an investment portfolio and diversify. There is no rule that you must be limited to a handful of categories or genres, so you should embrace experimentation. The market and consumer purchase patterns are always going to be changing and that means that part of your list may fall out of fashion while another part suddenly starts to sell again. Every year, Ulysses’ annual revenue is 70% backlist, and I very much attribute this to the fact that we will publish into any category the winds take us to. The strength of that diverse backlist means that we have a cushion if we strike out with more front list titles than we’d like in any given year and provides an enormous amount of security in the long run. That’s great advice Keith, thank you. Finally, tell us something about yourself that has nothing to do with work or publishing! Even though I grew up in California, I started playing ice hockey as a kid and still play to this day...shout out to my home ice at New York’s Chelsea Piers! When my son was a newborn, I took a slapshot off the hand and shattered my left index finger. Now I type with nine fingers. And I no longer stand in the way of pucks. It’s been a great pleasure getting to know you, Keith! We wish you success always -- in work and on the ice rink!
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