Independent Publishers Group [IPG], which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this spring, is officially rolling out a new logo today, to better reflect the company’s more complex dynamic in an evolving industry.
“How people regard us has not caught up with the reality of who we are,” IPG president Mark Suchomel told PW, describing the company’s previous logo – a stylized image of a print book -- as “staid” and “outdated.
“We’re more technologically savvy, more hip, more at the forefront of providing strong marketing and distribution service,” he added, disclosing that the company also is going to identify itself in the marketplace simply by its initials, IPG, rather than the company’s official name, as “so many people call it that, anyway.”
Suchomel added that, while IPG was founded in Chicago in 1971 by David and Mona White to distribute books from about a dozen independent small presses, the company has become “so much more than print books” since being acquired in 1987 by IPG CEO Curt Mattherws and his wife, Linda, then and now the publishers of Chicago Review Press. “After all, we’ve been selling e-books for the past 10 years,” he said.
The company, which currently has 165-170 employees, distributes books in print and digital formats as well as other products, including audiobooks, DVDs, cards, and posters, for hundreds of independent publishers all over the world through six different distribution programs.
Suchomel explained that the role of a book distribution company has changed dramatically in the past 40 years, just as the entire industry itself has changed. “We’re much more of a marketing company now,” he says, describing IPG personnel as working closely with client publishers throughout the entire process of positioning their books in the marketplace. With the proliferation of books in so many different formats, Suchomel explains, it’s not enough to simply sell books to accounts. IPG currently manages title data, informs accounts about titles most appropriate to them, and actively assists publishers in generating and maintaining interest in the marketplace.
IPG will also roll out its revamped Web site at the end of this month.
