Over the last couple of years, we have begun helping several publishers in the United Kingdom automate their royalty management processes.  To better serve our current and future customers and to further expand our knowledge and presence in the UK and Europe, we recently joined the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG).

In their words:

“The IPG helps publishers to do better business and become part of a real community — somewhere they can find advice, benefits and information. We give independent companies the support they need to get the most out of publishing and keep theirbusinesses growing.”

We have already experienced the benefit of this community and learned much.

To read our member profile, please visit their “Meet the Supplier:  MetaComet Sytems” page.  Here’s a short excerpt on our vision of the opportunities available to Independent Publishers:

“We see great opportunities for independent publishers. With all the consolidation of the largest houses, there are new gaps in the mid-range of the industry enabling indies to thrive. Related to this is the author relationship. Authors have more choices than ever, and independent publishers are much better positioned to establish strong, long-term ties with their content creators. Finally, with the growth of ebooks, publishers can get quality content to market much faster and more cost effectively. We have several publishers that only print books after they’ve experienced success with ebook versions in their target market. That reduces risk.

“On the flip side, because it is so easy for anyone to publish a book, the amount of noise in the market makes it harder for readers to discover good books. The good news is that most of the ‘noise’ out there is garbage, and a good publisher with quality content and a good marketing plan can make their books stand out.”

We look forward to a great relationship with the IPG and to all our new friends in the world of UK publishing.