It’s good to talk

How often do you talk to your key suppliers? Is it only when there’s a problem? Or perhaps to dispute an invoice? Perhaps you try to keep contact to a minimum for fear of being sucked into spending more money?

Whatever the reason, many publishers don’t speak to their suppliers often enough, which is a shame, because a regular dialogue can be hugely beneficial.

Suppliers increasingly see themselves as partners who play an integral part in our success. That is why we call our annual ‘supplier’ directory, the Publishing Partners Guide (PPG).

Talk to your ‘partners’ more regularly, and you’re likely to find:

• Solutions to your problems: publishing partners are likely to have faced, and found answers to, most of the challenges you face, by virtue of the fact they are dealing with lots of publishers like you on a daily basis. We all like to view our challenges as unique, but, err, they’re usually not…
• Inspiration and new ideas: they have a broad overview of the industry and know what other publishers are up to. Many of them have also worked in publishing in previous lives, so have a natural affinity with publishers.
• System improvements: at some point or another, we’ve all worked with dodgy workflows and inefficient systems, creaking under the weight of accumulated years of patches and manual workarounds. More often than not, most workflow inefficiencies can be traced back to a lack of communication.

Publishing partners have a vested interest in your success, because if you succeed, they succeed.

This year’s PPG will be published shortly and mailed out with the Jan/Feb issue of InPublishing magazine (register here to be added to the mailing list). It has 78 in-depth profiles of leading partners, along with articles looking at the opportunities and threats during the year ahead, a new look and improved indexing to help you find what you’re looking for.

I can safely say that they would all welcome the chance to talk regularly with you. Do call them to see how they can help you achieve your publishing goals.