Did you know that, according to UNESCO, approximately 2.2 million books are published annually around the globe? And the industry is growing every year. In fact, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), shared in their StatShot report that revenues were up 12.2% at $15.4 billion in the United States for 2021. This is thrilling for readers looking to immerse themselves into amazing content, from an industry that offers something for everyone suited to your interests in life.
Today we want to celebrate the joy of reading on World Book Day, as well as the advancements we’ve made since writing was developed and the only way to read was on a clay tablet. Now, we can enjoy the feeling of a paper book in our hands or carry around an entire library on an electronic tablet.
But the method of reading isn’t the only thing that has changed in the centuries since books first came into existence. Today, there are solutions available that makes getting books to consumers not only easy, but also cost-effective.
Easy end-to-end supply chain management
The Naviga Book platform is a complete order management system that makes end-to-end supply chain management a breeze. While the platform was built specifically for book publishers, it can be used by publishers for any inventoried item, such as merchandise.
The process begins with order entry through fulfillment to cash collection. As orders are entered, real time inventory tracking is taking place. Coupled with this is a returns management workflow that allows you to accurately manage inventory.
Orders can be created through a variety of options that include manual order entry, customer self-service through our eCommerce option and feeds from trading partners like Amazon and Barnes & Noble through our automated EDI process.
Once orders have been created in the system, an automated picklist generation will provide all necessary details to warehouses for fulfillment. Shipping confirmations will be received back from the warehouse.
Taking complexity out of royalty agreements and rights managements
The platform will allow you to streamline complex royalty agreements and rights management. Contracts entered in the system will be used during order entry and returns to calculate payments. You can also track payments against advances and issue end of year 1099’s to authors. In tandem with this, the rights management module will allow you to track Integrated Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and General Ledger to provide complete financial accounting and control over your business without the need to involve other systems.
Available options include our Publisher Portal, Author Portal and Fulfillment Portal. The Publisher portal allows third party publishers the ability to define products and sell campaigns directly in the system as well as download details on orders that have been placed. The Author portal provides authors and contributors with self-service access to sales performance associated with royalty and rights agreements. Finally, our Fulfillment portal provides the ability for real time digital fulfillment of books or magazines. This can apply to a single user or to a larger class style option.
Managing subscriptions has never been easier
Aside from offering book sales, the system also provides the ability to manage subscriptions. Subscriptions can vary from weekly distributed publication to an annual publication. It can also manage subscriptions to online content that may be published on your website. This coupled with our Fulfillment portal greatly reduces the stress of how publishers and their customers are managing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last but not least, a system may have all the best features you could ever want or need, but if you don’t have the means to easily track data to gain insights into business performance, you don’t have much. Our Informer module provides many canned reports and the ability for publishers to easily create custom reports without the need to learn a complex programming language.
The Naviga Book platform is growing every day. And with a growing number of integrations – Avalara, Smartystreets, Auth0, and more – our clients are able to handle end-to-end supply chain management easier than ever before, with all the data they need available at their fingertips.
From order entry to the reader’s hands, we’re celebrating books every step of the process. If you’re interested in learning more about the Naviga Book platform, feel free to contact us today.
This blog post was originally published April 22, 2021.