Hachette Book Group has hired Kenneth Michaels as Chief Operating Officer. He succeeds Beth Ford, who left in September, and will join the company on January 5. He was most recently SVP of Global Business Process Management for the McGraw-Hill Companies.

Marie Coolman will join Hyperion as Executive Director of Publicity, taking over the position recently vacated by Beth Gebhard, who left to relocate to LA to work for the new Oprah Winfrey Network. Coolman had been Director of Publicity and Marketing for Hudson Street Press, and was previously West Coast Director of Publicity at Random House….Tina Andreadis announced that Kate Blum joins HarperCollins Publicity as Associate Director. She spent her eight-year career at Random House….Samantha Choy joins the Crown publicity department as Senior Publicist. She comes from W. W. Norton.

Lots of changes internationally: Quercus CEO Mark Smith announced that Anthony Cheetham has relinquished his role as Executive Chairman after two years, becoming Non-Executive Chairman immediately. The announcement comes in the wake of former Macmillan MD David North’s appointment as Managing Director….Michael Moynahan has been named HarperCollins’s new CEO for Australia and New Zealand. Moynahan was MD, Random House India, and chairman, Random House New Zealand.

Webster Younce has joined Henry Holt as a Senior Editor, reporting to Editor-in-Chief Marjorie Braman. He was most recently Senior Editor at Houghton Mifflin.

In children’s books: Corinne Helman will become VP of Digital Publishing and Business Development for HarperCollins Children’s Books. She was most recently VP Business Development at Scholastic. Sarah Shumway has joined the Katherine Tegen Books imprint at Harper Children’s as Senior Editor, acquiring primarily middle-grade and YA fiction. She had been at Dutton Children’s….Namrata Tripathi will join Atheneum Children’s as Executive Editor. She was most recently Senior Editor at Hyperion Children’s. Additionally, Associate Editor Lisa Cheng will move from Margaret K. McEldery to Atheneum, reporting to Tripathi….Greg Ferguson, formerly of HarperCollins Children’s Books, will join Egmont USA as Editor, reporting to Publisher Elizabeth Law. Nico Medina joined as Managing Editor. Most recently, he was Production Editor at Viking Children’s and Puffin.

Camille March has been appointed to the position of Editor at Black Dog & Leventhal, reporting to Elizabeth Van Doren. Most recently, March was at Weinstein Books as Associate Director of Publicity.

Carrie Thornton will move to Dutton on December 1 as Executive Editor. She was most recently Publishing Manager and Senior Editor at Crown/Three Rivers Press….Don Weise has been named Publisher of Alyson Books. He had been Senior Editor at Carroll & Graf….Matt Weiland has joined Ecco as a Senior Editor. He has been Deputy Editor of The Paris Review for the past two years and is the co-author of State by State (Ecco).

Langenscheidt has named Nel Yomtov as Executive Editor of Hammond, reporting to Langenscheidt’s chief Sales and Marketing officer Michele Martin. Most recently, he was Editorial Director at the Rosen Publishing Group. He will also work on a new series for Langenscheidt.

Amanda Tobier has joined Little, Brown as Marketing Manager. She was most recently marketing director for Avery and Viking Studio.

Among the recent Rodale layoffs was Andrew R. Malkin, VP, Trade Book Sales. He may be reached at armalkin [at]  gmail.com.

Bookspan parent company Direct Brands announced that Senior Director of Communications Paula Batson has left the company to pursue other opportunities. She will continue to consult for them. Melinda Meals has taken her place.

Michael Schluter has been named Senior Director of Sales at Palgrave Macmillan. He was previously Director of Library Sales at Sage.

Laura Ross has joined Jill Grinberg Literary Management. Jenny Rappaport is leaving the L. Perkins Agency to start the Rappaport Agency. Lori Perkins will continue with her agency and has promoted Marsha Philitas to senior agent.

Betty Wong has been hired as an editor at Clarkson Potter’s Potter Craft. She was at Melcher Media.

PROMOTIONS AND INTERNAL CHANGES

Kim Hovey was named Associate Publisher of Random House Trade Paperbacks, reporting to Jane Von Mehren and continuing to report to Libby McGuire, Associate Publisher of Ballantine. Sanyu Dillon, as Director of Marketing, will now oversee the marketing/advertising/promotion efforts and staff for RHPG, continuing to report to Tom Perry, Deputy Publisher.

Elda Rotor has been promoted to Editorial Director at Penguin Classics. Rotor arrived at Penguin in 2006 from Oxford University Press.

Philip Patrick announced that Jay Sones has moved from Crown to Three Rivers Press as Marketing Manager, reporting to Donna Passannante. Kira Walton has been named Associate Marketing Director for Harmony and Shaye Areheart Books. Vicki Tomao has been named Advertising and Promotion Manager. She started as Patrick’s assistant in 2004. Jennifer Reierson has been named Senior Designer. She joined the company in 2000. Sarah Breivogel has been named Publicity Manager for Shaye Areheart Books and Selina Cicogna has been named Publicity Manager for Clarkson Potter.

Kevin Callahan has been promoted to Associate Director of Marketing at HarperCollins.

Michelle Brower has been promoted to Agent at Wendy Sherman Associates.

DULY NOTED
Nielsen BookScan announced that beginning in the first week of 2009, Hudson Group will join BookScan’s reporting panel. Hudson Group will report sales from their Hudson News and Hudson Booksellers locations in airports and train and bus terminals. Sales data will appear under the “retail” store strata.

UPCOMING EVENTS
The 21st Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair will take place at their headquarters on 20 W. 44th Street, New York, NY on December 6 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and December 7 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, go to http://www.nycip.org/bookfair.

Two NBCC events in 2009: On January 24 at 7 p.m. at the Housing Works Bookstore Café, announcers Sam Anderson (winner of the 2007 Balakian Award), Bill Henderson of Pushcart Press, Mary Jo Bang (winner of the 2007 Poetry award), Harriet Washington (winner of the 2007 nonfiction award), Alex Ross (winner of the 2007 criticism award), and others will announce the NBCC Awards finalists. The event will be hosted by NBCC President Jane Ciabattari. The night before, also at Housing Works, there will be a Poetry in Translation panel, “Has the U.S. Lost Touch with World Literature?” For more information, go to www.bookcritics.org.

The 4th Annual San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Writers’ Conference & Literary Festival takes place from February 20 to 22, 2009. For more information, go to www.sanmiguelauthors.com and www.sanmiguelworkshops.com.

The American Book Producers Association BookBuilding 2.0 seminar has been rescheduled for March 10, 2009 from 9 a.m. 6 p.m. at The Players. The morning session will focus on the essentials of developing and producing books, and the afternoon will feature two panels: “The Internet and Electronic Publishing,” moderated by Carolyn Pittis of HarperCollins, and “What’s Next?: Trends in Publishing,” moderated by Barbara Marcus of Penguin Young Readers Group. For more information, e-mail office at abpaonline dot org.

JUST FOR FUN

Webster’s New World® College Dictionary announced the top five candidates for the 2008 “Word of the Year,” which will be selected by editors and researchers at Webster’s and announced during a national radio satellite tour on December 1. The top candidates are overshare, leisure sickness, cyberchondriac, selective ignorance, and youthanasia. Vote at www.newworldword.com.

HarperCollins UK has announced that David Roth-Ey, formerly VP and Editorial Director of Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks in the US, has moved to the UK office as the new Director of Audio and E-books.

Cal Morgan, VP and Executive Editor at Harper, has been appointed VP, Editorial Director of Harper Perennial and Harper paperbacks.

With Quayside’s acquisition of Motor Books International (MBI), CEO Randy Roland has left the company, which will remain in St. Paul, Minnesota. Quayside CEO Ken Fund estimates that annual revenues will double, to about $75 million.

Dick Robinson announced that Beth Ford, who had been SVP, Global Operations and IT, is leaving Scholastic to become EVP and Chief Operating Officer at Hachette Book Group USA and Hachette’s press release, explained that “With the retirement of both Maureen Egen and Rick Hall earlier this year there was a clear need for HBGUSA to bring in a new chief operating officer, and in Beth we have found the right mix of skills and experience that that role demands.” She begins September 10 and reports to David Young.

Jennifer Bergstrom, VP and Publisher of Simon Spotlight Entertainment announced that Carl Raymond has been named Associate Publisher for SSE. Raymond was most recently consulting for Scholastic, and previously was Publishing Director for adult lifestyle titles at DK Publishing.

Leyah Jensen has joined Little Simon as Associate Art Director. Leyah was most recently at Scholastic.

Lisa Dolin has left Abrams, where she was Director of Special Sales, reporting to VP of Sales, Mary Wowk.

Julie Will has joined Rodale Books in their New York office as an editor. She was at Bantam Dell. David Kang has been named SVP and General Manager, online subscription services at Rodale. He had been SVP and COO, entertainment, at Major League Baseball Advanced Media.

Matthew Benjamin has left Collins to go to Workman as Senior Editor. Ben Loehnen is joining Collins Business as a Senior Editor in September. He’s been working as a freelance writer and editor, after working at Random House and Hyperion.

Anne Sullivan has joined The New Press as Publicity Director. She was Publicity Manager for Nation Books/Avalon for two years prior. . . . Andy Heidel has joined Houghton Mifflin as Assistant Director of Publicity. . . . Campbell Wharton has joined HarperCollins as Associate Director of Publicity. . . . Books & Such Literary Agency announced that Kathleen Y’Barbo has joined the agency as in-house Publicist.

After 22 years at Viking and six at Roaring Brook Press, Deborah Brodie is starting her own business as a freelance editor for children’s, teen, and adult books. She may be reached at Deborahbro@ aol.com or 212-932-9506.

The NYC offices of Hay House are up and running, with Patricia Gift as the Director of Acquisitions, Cheryl Woodruff as President of SmileyBooks, a joint venture between Hay House and Tavis Smiley, and Laura Koch as Associate Editor. Hay House is at 33 W. 19th Street, 4th floor New York, NY 10011; 646-619-1314.

Jennifer Daniels has been named VP General Counsel and Secretary of the Board of Directors of Barnes & Noble.

At Borders Group, Susan Harwood has joined the company as the new Chief Information Officer.

John Molish has joined Tantor Media as VP Sales & Marketing. He was formerly Executive Sales Director at Brighter Minds Media.

PROMOTIONS

Following his move into the Touchstone/ Fireside group of imprints, EVP Publisher John Howard now reports to Mark Gompertz, EVP and Publisher of Touchstone/Fireside. Howard will remain in West Monroe, Louisiana.

At Running Press, Director of Marketing and Publicity Craig Herman has been promoted to Associate Publisher. Jennifer Kasius has been promoted to Executive Editor.

And at sister company Basic Books, Lara Heimert has been promoted to VP and Editorial Director, responsible for overseeing the editorial staff, and Executive Editor William Frucht has been promoted to VP.

Tina Bennett and Eric Simonoff have both been promoted to Directors at
Janklow & Nesbit.

Jared Kieling has been promoted for Publisher at Bloomberg. He was Editorial Director, a position that Executive Editor Mary Ann McGuigan will now fill.

Andrea Sheehan has been promoted to the position of VP, Director of Online Sales and Merchandising at S&S, reporting directly to Larry Norton.

Watson Guptill has promoted Joy Aquilino to Executive Editor. She handles crafts titles and has two senior editors, Julie Mazur and Abigail Wilentz, reporting to her.

At the Hachette Book Group USA, Little, Brown Publisher Michael Pietsch and Warner publisher Jamie Raab were both promoted to EVPs, and Megan Tingley has been promoted to SVP. Maja Thomas has been promoted to SVP of Hachette Book Group USA Audio and Digital Publishing.

With the promotion of Gary Gentel as Interim President of Houghton Mifflin Trade & Reference, Maire Gorman has been promoted to VP, Director of Sales.

At Workman, Page Edmunds has been promoted to Associate Publisher. Edmunds, who has been Director of National Account sales, will continue to sell to Ingram and the warehouse clubs and will continue as in-house liaison with HighBridge Audio.

Julie Strauss-Gabel has been promoted to Associate Editorial Director of the Dutton Children’s Books.

Giuseppe Castellano has been promoted to Art Director for Simon Spotlight.

SEPTEMBER EVENTS

The French-American Foundation, German Book Office and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy have joined forces to organize three days (Sept. 16-18) of public, professional, and networking events in New York City “in an effort to strengthen ties between French, German and American publishers and to encourage interest in foreign literature and translation.” For further information contact Margaret Bensfield at 212.255.8455×214 or mbensfield@ groupsjr.com. Weekend events will be tied in with The Brooklyn Book Festival (see below). On September 17, a variety of discussions are scheduled, including a luncheon panel on “Publishing Trends,” with Harold Augenbraum, Executive Director, National Book Foundation, Rachel Deahl, Senior News Editor, Publishers Weekly, Peter Mayer, Publisher of Overlook, and Eric Banks, Editor-in-Chief, Bookforum. All events take place at Deutsches Haus, 42 Washington Mews.

The National Book Critics Circle is opening the fall season in New York with a week-long symposium, The Age of Infinite Margins: Book Critics Face the 21st Century. Panelists will include leading authors, publishers, and critics. The first three panels are being held at the Housing Works Bookstore Café, while the final event is being held at the Brooklyn Historical Society, in conjunction with the Brooklyn Book Festival (see below). For more information, please go to http://www.bookcritics.org/. For further information at the events listed above, please contact John Freeman at jfreeman4@nyc.rr.com (646-246-8565).

The National Book Foundation will once again participate in this year’s second annual Brooklyn Book Festival, to be held in downtown Brooklyn on Sunday, September 16, 2007 from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The festival will present National Book Award authors Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Paula Fox, Mary Gaitskill, Gloria Naylor, and Jacqueline Woodson. Other authors scheduled include Jim Carroll, Mike Farrell, Kimiko Hahn, Philip Lopate, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, and Colson Whitehead. For more information on the festival, visit visitbrooklyn.org.

DULY NOTED
The Club for Unesco of the Department of Piraeus & Islands is organizing an International Poetry Competition. Greek and foreign citizens from all over the world can participate. Any language can be used for participating in the competition. The final evaluation of the 100 poems will be made by a special committee and the results will be published in the daily press. Each participant will take part with two poems from which one will be chosen. The selected participations will be subject of a special compound publication.

Submissions may be sent to Post Restant, Piraeus Central Post Office, 185 01 Piraeus, Greece by October 12, 2007. For further information, call: 210 4110212; 6977238764

While a well-oiled supply chain has been an obsession among other industries over the last two decades, book publishers have only recently begun to put the product pipeline front and center on the radar screen as they try to banish “inventory obsolescence” — products washing up on the corporate doorstep that no longer have any value. Spurred on by the flourishing of high-sale, high-return retail channels, big technology upgrades (SAP, anyone?), better access to sales data, and the improving economics of shorter print runs, most major publishers have sought out fresh thinking about inventory management as they look to boost sell-through efficiency, drive down product costs, and ramp up inventory turn.

Granted, it’s not the sexiest thing in publishing. But increasing consciousness of supply chain issues throughout the industry — including Borders’ much-debated “category management” exercise, ubiquitous Bookscan data, and information streaming from Baker & Taylor and Ingram — has led executives to take a closer survey of any supply chain slack. From forecasting demand to manufacturing, shipping, and billing titles, all the way until that inventory drops into the hands of a purchaser, publishers are working more concertedly than ever to avoid the classic worst-case scenario: books going out-of-stock at one account (causing missed sales) while being overstocked at another (you’ve got returns). And while the bottom-line impact may be debatable, the quest for supply-chain salvation is no doubt on in earnest.

‘Just In Time,’ Not ‘Just In Case’

One of the most ambitious such quests has taken place at Simon & Schuster, which got rolling in August 2000 with the launch of its Supply Chain Management department, headed up by Cliff Walter, who had been Director of Inventory Control and Operations at Pocket. The supply chain unit consolidated all inventory management departments and demand planners, who resided in the sales organizations at the time. This effort was central to “our ongoing initiative to significantly improve sell-through efficiency across all segments of our domestic business.” The group got cracking on a replenishment model, forecasting sales by account for major titles. Within a year more consolidation was under way: S&S folded production, inventory management, and supply chain management together under Joe D’Onofrio, Simon & Schuster’s SVP Supply Chain, who in a prior role as VP, General Manager of Pocket helped bring about what the company called “a significant reduction in returns.” Finally, this summer S&S expanded D’Onofrio’s purview even further to include the distribution and order fulfillment functions, as well as an operations group that manages reporting, customer and vendor requirements, and purchasing. Now, every link in the supply chain — from demand forecasting and manufacturing all the way through to distribution and customer service — reports to D’Onofrio, who in turn reports to CFO Sam Judd.

In theory, the process works like this: At the beginning of each selling season, the sales team “grids out” what revenue they think the new list will generate, while the demand planners are working with sales and publishing management to establish initial distribution targets for major accounts. Key to this process is the use of previous title sales history and point-of-sale data from Bookscan and other feeds from wholesalers and retailers. Then the production department is prepped to tackle the timing and delivery of books, which are in many cases shipped direct from the bindery. In practice — for Hillary Clinton’s Living History, which went out the door with a million copies — “this whole process worked like a fine-tuned orchestra,” D’Onofrio says. His demand forecasters were getting daily point-of-sale information from major accounts. They met with publishers and the sales team twice a day, monitoring retail channels. Once they tracked a sales velocity, they then turned to the production department to schedule quick reprints, and vendors were cued to deliver the product on time.

This crucial last link in the chain has been bolstered with “cross-enterprise collaboration,” meaning that S&S has begun to forge strategic partnerships with suppliers, signing last year a “long-term, single-source arrangement” with printer Quebecor World. As a result, turnaround time has shrunk in some cases to five or seven days, giving S&S an extra week or two to monitor sales before hitting the reprint button. The result? “Hillary sell-through has been phenomenal,” D’Onofrio says. “On a book with distribution of 1.6 million copies in the marketplace in six seeks, we’ve already sold through 1.2 million.” Meanwhile, John Adams went through more than 30 reprints, with over 1.6 million copies in print and a return rate of “barely 6%.”

Just one question: How do demand planners and inventory managers avoid internecine warfare with the sales organization? Officially, the demand forecasting department acts “in an advisory capacity” to the publishers and the sales force, and as D’Onofrio emphasizes: “The publishers are in control. We provide recommendations, but they’re the ones making the call.” The relationship with the sales teams has also evolved over time, as a certain amount of re-education has been necessary for reps who have been conditioned that the bigger the order quantity the better. “In the old days, it was all about getting the biggest order you can get,” D’Onofrio says. “The new model is, ‘Go get me the best order you can get.’” Now, when a customer orders up 25,000 copies, S&S may demur. “We’ve said, ‘We’ll give you 20,000 and we’ll stage 5,000 for you. If the book starts to take off, we’ll respond.’ That’s a whole different mindset.” D’Onofrio cautions that his team has worked hard to avoid alienating customers — as happened some years ago when other publishers took a hard line on restricting order quantities. As D’Onofrio explains, “There are customers who have taken exception to us second-guessing them, but they’ve learned to trust our judgment as long as we’re able to respond to their reorders.” As D’Onofrio acknowledges, “It’s very complicated and intricate and requires the utmost coordination across the whole value chain to get the result that you want.” Still, getting all of the players in the supply chain in the same room together is, at very least, a novel step in the right direction. “They’re part of the process. That never happened before,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s all about getting the right product to the right place in the right quantities at the right time.”

Quarterbacking ‘Captain Underpants’

With a task as mammoth as the distribution of Harry Potter — or a “huge selling” education program like Read 180, which includes paperbacks and audiobooks as well as CD-ROMs and teacher materials, all packed in an inventory manager’s nightmare of 13 crates — you’d think Scholastic would also be burnishing its supply chain links. Indeed, the publisher has “invested very heavily” in the people, processes, and technology to give its big titles a better bounce, according to VP Supply Chain Pete Datos. At Scholastic, an inventory forecasting and planning revamp had just gotten under way when Beth Ford, SVP Global Operations and Information Technology, came on board in August 2000 and grabbed the reins. Specifically, the company targeted cost savings on products such as Captain Underpants (the new title just now shipping has a print order of 1.6 million) that are sold across a number of channels, including book clubs, fairs, and the trade market. “The whole idea was to drive cross-channel visibility of our inventory requirements,” Ford explains. As the centerpiece of its technology platform, Scholastic selected a Manugistics suite of supply chain software products, and in early 2001 Ford created the new position of VP Supply Chain, and brought in Datos from Unilever to shepherd the day-to-day activities, reporting to Ford. Finally, last fall the company began centralizing some of its planning operations, particularly on the supply side.

Here’s the drill at Scholastic: Datos oversees all capacity and scheduling functions, on the one hand, and inventory management, on the other, in addition to a planning and analysis group — with a few Joe Montana moves thrown in. “Pete’s role is to give a crucial weekly, monthly, and quarterly view of what’s happening across logistics, across manufacturing, and in the channels,” says Ford. “He sits right in the middle of all this activity and plays the quarterback role with all these different functions.” (Ford’s role is more analogous to D’Onofrio’s at Simon & Schuster. Among those reporting to Ford are Datos’ planning group; the logistics group; purchasing and manufacturing; and the warehousing group. Ford in turn reports to Scholastic CEO Richard Robinson.) At Scholastic, demand planning is carried out within each division, because demand drivers are different for each channel. Datos’ task is to consolidate these forecasts, time-phase them, and develop an appropriate inventory plan based on vendor and warehouse capacity. “Instead of asking the division what to print, we’re now asking them what they’re going to sell,” Datos explains. “We’re consolidating that across the channels and then deciding what to print.”

And that’s where the database comes in. Weekly updates of inventory positions in the company’s Jefferson City, MO warehouse are fed into the system, as well as sales information, and weekly master plans are generated — though Harry Potter required a detailed daily delivery schedule. (In the unfortunate event of a stock shortage, the planning group defers to each of the divisions to decide who gets what inventory.) At the same time, Scholastic has developed its system to offer vendors better visibility into its print capacity needs, and is working on an EDI link with R.R. Donnelley, the long-term vision being to integrate its system more usefully with both vendors and customers.

One might rightly wonder if consumer products strategies can work for books as well as they do for, say, cartons of Lipton tea. “It’s amazing how many of the analytical methods really do work across industries,” Datos reports. When Scholastic first deployed a technique used in other industries known as statistical safety stock — a way to forecast a bottom-line inventory number to cover fluctuations in demand — there was some doubt whether it would work for books. But — small wonder — Scholastic found this formula does a bang-up job for the publishing industry, allowing the company to take into account its “historical forecast error” and arrive at a minimum inventory level for each item. “It makes a lot of sense to have a safety stock level on our items that are regular evergreen titles,” Datos says. “There’s a real way to make sure that you don’t run out of stock.”

It’s clear that supply chain innovations have paid off for larger businesses. But should other houses order up a Manugistics implementation? Some say their nimbleness makes all the supply-chain difference. “Our size is an advantage,” says Jack Perry, VP Sales, Marketing, and Publicity at Sourcebooks. “We can’t outspend Scholastic. But we can communicate better. We’re also able to move faster. We don’t have to wait for 12 people to make a decision.” Still, Perry says tighter inventory control has reduced returns by 24% so far this year, driven by shorter, more frequent reprints: “We may do a reprint every couple of weeks. It does cost us more per unit, but instead of doing 20,000 we may find we only needed 15,000. We can skip that last reprint and it saves us from being overstocked.” Downloadable sales information has also helped level the data playing field. “In the past, large publishers had access to a lot of information that other publishers couldn’t get,” he says. “Bookscan has given smaller publishers more information, so we can now make these decisions.” In the academic publishing world, Oxford University Press USA has been able to drive a notable decrease in inventory costs via a print-on-demand partnership with Lightning Source, according to SVP Operations Brinton Strode. About 4,600 titles are now available on a POD basis, making sales of $2.5 million last year, and since Lightning has facilities in both the US and UK, Oxford can access the full breadth of its list from either side of the pond and drop-ship those titles for delivery as necessary.

How do souped-up supply chains look from the other end of the pipeline? “The major publishers have come a long way in working with accounts,” says Jean Srnecz, SVP Merchandising at Baker & Taylor. “They’re trying to take time out of the supply chain by more and better EDI relationships, and they’re making better use of the available information in the marketplace.” B&T’s own studies show that return rates are closely related to title lead times: the longer it takes between order placement and availability for sale, the higher the returns. Srnecz stresses that the company’s Title Source database offers publishers access to demand, on-hand, and order positions, in addition to custom reports. There’s always a downside, of course, when the supply chain turns into a trickle. “Returns are a cost of sales and marketing,” Srnecz says. “You need to model what the price of the book can absorb, and then work your supply chain metrics accordingly, watching the rate of sale day-to-day or hour-to-hour. Title Source is updated daily, and has a click through feature that allows near real-time access to inventory information.”

Other wholesalers credit publishers with aiding their own supply chain strides. “We definitely have seen a trend over the last few years, with primarily the larger publishers,” says Kelley Maier, SVP Product Management and Marketing for Ingram Book Group. “We’re not only seeing a positive impact on sell-through, but big benefits in inventory turn and in-stock rates both for Ingram to our customers, and also from our publishers.” Ingram’s fill rate on its nearly 750,000 titles is close to 90% — “the highest fill rate we’ve ever seen,” says Maier. She adds that Ingram’s ipage portal is being developed as an electronic feed that will push data directly into publishers’ systems, a function expected to go live with a select group of publishers in January.

We thank Mike Shatzkin of The Idea Logical Company for his contribution to this article.