Livres Canada Books (LCB) is a not-for-profit organization that supports Canadian-owned book publishers in their export sales activities and in developing international partnerships. It does so through a range of services, including financial support, promotion, research, training, and a collective presence at major international book fairs.

SUNY Press came to ReaderBound with a site that was somewhat limited in its functionality and challenging to maintain. It was also not optimally responsive across devices nor was it accessible by current standards. As it was, the search experience didn’t expose the rich and meaningful structure of SUNY Press’s extensive catalogue.

With a big list and a large number of series to feature, it was time for a new site that could provide SUNY Press with a more powerful web platform with expanded sales and marketing capabilities.

“We’re happy that the new site is geared to how our readers actually think about and search for books,” says Lam. “We’ve seen major gains in sales from the website and are finding a lot of customers are doing “deep dives” into our backlist – whether for a specific author or category.”

Theytus Books is a leading North American publisher of Indigenous voices and the oldest Indigenous-owned and operated publishing house in Canada. The press was founded in 1980 with a mission to preserve and share Indigenous knowledge and creative work, and its name comes from the Salish language, meaning “preserving for the sake of handing down.”

The team at the University Press of Mississippi (UPM) came to us with a familiar story. Updating their website was tedious and time-consuming. Their data and systems didn’t speak the same language. The site was built by a freelance developer who wasn't always easy to reach. Everything was done manually. It may have been okay in 2005, but by 2018 just didn’t work for the press anymore. 

UPM started looking for a website developer that checked a few boxes: a company, not just an individual; a team who truly understood publishing and the press’ specific needs; an integrated data solution; and automatic flow to the website.

“Ideally, we also wanted people familiar with the publishing industry and the specific needs of publishers, and who were willing to work with us to customize things to our individual needs,” says Kristin Kirkpatrick, Electronic and Direct-to-Consumer Sales Manager.

When the University of Michigan Press reached out to ReaderBound for an initial conversation about a website redesign, we were immediately impressed by their rich and wide-ranging publishing program. The press had thousands of titles alongside many additional resources, a large team including in-house developers, complex ecommerce and fulfillment needs, and a biggie: a second publishing division (Michigan Publishing Services) that would require its own site.

Thankfully, the ReaderBound platform can be custom-tailored as needed and that foundation led us to several innovative solutions for Michigan, including multiple data feeds, two sites out of one content management system, and more.

“ReaderBound truly has publishers’ best interests at heart," says Portage & Main Publisher Catherine Gerbasi. "They know the book market, they’re such good listeners, they’re great problem-solvers, and they’re creative. I would definitely recommend them for their experience, expertise, and value.”

She adds that, “Sales through our website increased by close to 40%. Within a year, the site had more for paid for itself. The value for what we received is extremely high. No more constant bills for fixes. We’ve saved a lot of money moving to ReaderBound.”

[The site is] doing all kinds of stuff people didn’t anticipate. It’s opening our minds to new possibilities.

Annick Press has been publishing classic and contemporary children’s literature since 1975. While you most certainly know some of their most beloved titles, including Robert Munsch’s The Paper Bag Princess and Kathy Stinson’s Red Is Best, they’ve also been on the forefront of publishing exciting, diverse new voices; winning major awards; and providing teaching guides and resources to an enthusiastic audience of educators and librarians.

Playwrights Canada Press needed a website that could bring efficiency to daily operations and end the tedious task of repeating ONIX processes for different platforms, a duplication of work that can eat up priceless staff hours. But there was much more to the site than that. Since its launch in 2018, Playwrights’ direct website sales have nearly doubled year-over-year. How did it happen? We sat down with the Playwrights Canada team to talk about how their website has helped them achieve their business goals.

“Since 2020, our website has been our second biggest ‘customer’ after Amazon, outpacing Indigo sales by quite a bit,” says Publisher Annie Gibson. “And since returns from website sales are few and far between it means those sales are safely part of our income — we don’t have to worry that they’ll be taken away six months down the road.”

With 50 percent of book discovery happening online, and nearly half of all purchases taking place via e-commerce, book publishers require solid and secure websites that not only attract readers and book buyers, but that can also be relied upon day in and day out for promotions, reader engagement, and sales. A website outage — even a short one — can be disastrous.

As the fourth largest university press in Canada, Wilfrid Laurier University Press (WLUP) has been publishing scholarly monograms and collections, mainly in the area of social sciences and humanities, since 1974.

The press currently publishes 30 to 40 books per year -- an ambitious publishing program for a small team. This was a big factor in WLUP’s requirement for a website that was reliable, easy to update and maintain, and that provided lots of automated features to minimize the demand on staff time.

Change has been in the air at the University of Regina Press for the past several years; most recently with the launch of its new website. But it started back in 2013, when the press, after 40 years of operation as the Canadian Plains Research Center Press, relaunched with a new brand, a new publisher, and a new goal to expand its publishing program. “Canadian Plains had focused on Indigenous issues, and we have continued that focus,” said sales and marketing manager Morgan Tunzelmann, “but we’ve expanded to include a broader readership and titles.”