It's seven years since I was invited by Sheila Bounford to speak at the IPG conference in Torquay. It was the beginning of the e4books campaign and the message was that independent publishers needed to think about how proficiency in the supply chain gave them competitive advantage. Thankfully - and greatly to their benefit - many publishers have taken that advice: outsourced distribution, understood the fundamental impact of product metadata on sales performance, installed publishing management systems which reduced error and automated processes which should never be wasting the time of the publishing entrepreneurs who are the bedrock of the IPG.
We're in a different game now, though. IPG members have been as enterprising as ever in embracing the digital future, publishing digitally, developing apps and tweeting and facebooking as if it was going out of fashion. It was depressing from a BIC perspective, though, that this year's conference in Chipping Norton avoided almost any mention of the digital supply chain or the value of product metadata - more important than ever in the digital maelstrom. These subjects may not have the same appeal as social networking but independent publishers ignore them at their peril. Freedom to innovate and publish innovatively - not to mention survival - will for better or worse increasingly depend on the smooth running of these supply chain mechanics.
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