Ty Wilson, sales rep for the Ingram Publisher Services brands Publishers Group West and Two Rivers, made PW’s rep of the year shortlist in 2023. This year, he takes home the prize.
A resident of Sonoma, Calif., Wilson covers the Northern California sales territory from Mendocino to Santa Cruz to Sacramento. His career began in 1984, when he worked at Tower Books in Sacramento. He eventually became Tower's national adult frontlist buyer, before serving as adult frontlist buyer for six Copperfield’s Books Bay Area locations.
“This business is still very much a personal business,” dependent on positive relationships and good word-of-mouth, Wilson told PW. One of the things he loves most about his work is “that chain from editor to rep, from rep to bookseller, from bookseller out into the public.”
Two years ago, Wilson said, he had an especially fortuitous exchange with Katie Raissian, who’s now an executive editor at Scribner but was then a senior editor at Grove Atlantic. Raissian knew that Wilson was a fan of author Colin Barrett, so she sent him an early copy of Barrett’s slow-burn thriller, Wild Houses.
“I knew it would fit into Bookshop West Portal’s Irish book subscription program,” Wilson said, so he shared the heads-up with West Portal owner-buyer Anna Bullard, “and it all came together: they ordered up big, they sold it big, and then it got longlisted for the Booker.” Wilson is delighted to have helped build the buzz.
Lately, Wilson said, he’s “trying to focus on a handful of titles that I feel strongly about.” His picks for this year include John Kenney’s novel about an obituary writer, I See You’ve Called in Dead (Zibby, out now); French author Thomas Schlesser’s American debut, Mona’s Eyes, translated by Hildegarde Serle (Europa Editions, Aug.); and Indian author Vivek Shanbhag’s Sakina’s Kiss, translated by Srinath Perur, a June paperback original from PGW’s new distribution partner, McNally Editions.
Green Apple Books co-owners Pete Mulvihill and Kevin Ryan, who nominated Wilson, speak highly of him as a trusted rep for their Bay Area trio of stores. Wilson is “an experienced, knowledgeable sales rep,” Mulvihill wrote in his nomination, and Ryan agrees. “He has a knack for not just selling me the titles I need, but digging out gems,” Ryan said in nominating Wilson. “He’s long overdue for recognition.”
Michael Barnard, president and general manager of Rakestraw Books in Danville, Calif., has been buying from Wilson for years, too. “Working with Ty is a total pleasure,” Barnard wrote when nominating Wilson. “He’s knowledgeable, diligent, and passionate about books. He works hard in support of his many, many publishers, but he also truly cares about the stores in his charge. I cannot think of anyone who deserves this honor more.”
Wilson is recovering from hip replacement surgery this spring, but by fall he expects to be slinging ARCs at sales conferences and trade shows again. “I’ll be the rep wearing the laurel,” he joked about the Rep of the Year award. Still, he affirms that the honor is “heartening news” to mark his four decades in books. “It makes me feel so good,” he said, “and it makes me think of all the colleagues, all the reps, all the buyers, current and past, who saw me in the windowless office at Tower Broadway and taught me how to be a better buyer and a better bookseller.”
