Publish & Prosper
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Publish & Prosper
What the Publishing Industry Should Learn from Heated Rivalry
In December 2025, a sports romance series off Harlequin’s backlist, with modest sales and a niche fanbase, exploded into an overnight international sensation when the first two episodes of Heated Rivalry aired on Crave and HBO Max. New fans scrambled to get their hands on copies of the six-book series and were quickly disappointed by the realization that the titles were sold out everywhere.
What could Harlequin have done to meet the unexpected demand and avoid unknown losses in book sales? What can other publishers and authors do to capitalize on the moment? To start, they can listen to Lauren & Matt explore solutions for publishers and authors facing unexpected virality and demand that outpaces inventory supply.
Tune in now wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the video episode on YouTube!
Dive Deeper
📚 Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
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Sound Bites From This Episode
🎙️ [6:06] “As I was watching this unfold in real time, the whole time I was thinking, God, this would be a perfect opportunity to implement a hybrid solution here where a traditional publisher could supplement their inventory with print-on-demand books.”
🎙️ [19:27] “When you dig into the traditional publishing world and you look at where their revenues come from, most, if not all of them make more money off their backlist than they do their front lists. And not having these systems in place to protect yourself, to future proof your inventory when virality hits or some sort of marketing surge happens…it's just wild to me that every publisher doesn't have this stopgap in place these days.”
🎙️ [42:32] “Just because one book went viral doesn't mean everyone is going to go viral, but it still means that you have opportunities to seize that moment too.”
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Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to Publish & Prosper. And while this might be our second episode of the new year, this is, in fact, the first one we're actually recording in the new year. So welcome back for real this time. We hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday season and New Year. And did you get a new shirt for the holidays this year, Matt?
Matt: I actually had this shirt, but I forgot I had it. And this morning I found it in my drawer, and I got really excited because I was like well, A., finally a shirt I haven't worn on camera, and B., for obvious reasons, it's my new favorite shirt.
Lauren: It is like it was specifically made just for you.
Matt: I wish it was.
Lauren: It could have been
Matt: I wish I was the only one that had it, but.
Lauren: That's fair.
Matt: It's not the case.
Lauren: Well.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: It's a great choice anyway.
Matt: It's a good way to start the year off.
Lauren: It sure is.
Matt: Even though this is our second episode of the year.
Lauren: In the last episode that we did, you retroactively assumed you were going to have a good holiday break. Were you correct? Did you?
Matt: I did.
Lauren: Good.
Matt: I did, yes. All things told and said, it was a good holiday.
Lauren: All right.
Matt: We had fun. Yeah. How about you?
Lauren: It was a little chaotic. It was good –
Matt: Chaotic good or chaotic bad?
Lauren: Kind of both.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Kind of all the above.
Matt: Yeah?
Lauren: But, yeah, you know. We left all that behind in 2025. And now it's–now a new year.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: New season.
Matt: Without any spoilers... How did you feel about the Stranger Things season five?
Lauren: I am content with it.
Matt: That's a good word.
Lauren: I'm not blown away.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But I am content.
Matt: That's a good word.
Lauren: Did you watch it?
Matt: I did.
Lauren: How do you feel about it?
Matt: Yeah. Same.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: I was trying to explain how I felt about the finale to Lali, and I couldn't really come up with a really fitting word. That's a good one.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I wish I had thought of that. Content, I would agree. We'll just leave it at that, I guess.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah. I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but.
Lauren: No.
Matt: We're content with it on this show.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You get a seven out of ten contentment score –
Lauren: I think –
Matt: – Stranger Things.
Lauren: I think that's reasonable. It's weird to think about like...for all the things that we do talk about on here, and all the things that are really obvious about us... Like, we're both huge Stranger Things fans, and I don't think that's ever really made its way onto any of our podcast episodes.
Matt: I think early days –
Lauren: Maybe.
Matt: – there were cameos of us talking about it. It's lower on the priority list for me.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And I think even you, when you talk about other things that we're fanatics about. And, you know, the fact that it took so long for season –
Lauren: Right.
Matt: – five to come out. Like, they weren't really doing themselves any favors there.
Lauren: No.
Matt: You know?
Lauren: They really lost a lot of momentum.
Matt: So.
Lauren: But.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. So.
Matt: I was just curious. And I had just realized I hadn't asked you about it the whole time today or yesterday, so.
Lauren: No. That's fair.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Lauren: Well, we hope everyone listening was satisfied one way or another with their various entertainment media options over the holidays.
Matt: Or at least satisfied with their holidays. I don't really care about their media and entertainment options.
Lauren: Well I hope that at least one person listening was entertained by the media that we're going to talk about today in this episode.
Matt: Well, one person definitely was. It was you.
Lauren: I – confirmed.
[3:13] - Topic Intro
Lauren: So today we're going to be talking about something that's actually topical in a lot of different ways. Because, if you've listened to some of our recent episodes right around the end of last year, Matt and I did a lot of talking about, like, different ways that we think traditional publishing could be better supported by print-on-demand models, and some opportunities that we think that trad pub are really missing out on by not using, whether it's print-on-demand or selling direct or whatever. And then as we were talking about that, this kind of crazy media surge happened with the TV show Heated Rivalry.
Matt: A TV show?
Lauren: Mmhmm.
Matt: Which I'm assuming is linked to a book.
Lauren: Yes it is.
Matt: Okay. But I do want to back up a step. To be clear, there are traditional publishing houses that are utilizing print-on-demand in certain ways.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So we're not necessarily blanket saying none of them are using this. But there are definitely a lot of them that are not.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And there's a lot of them that have yet to really, I think, grasp what we're about to talk about as one of the many ways that a print-on-demand model can complement what they're currently doing as it pertains to inventory and other things.
Matt: And, and just like in our last episode with our discussion around AI and how to use it for productivity in the world of publishing. By no means are we making assumptions broadly that traditional publishing doesn't know how to use AI, but we do know that a lot of them are not using it. We know that some are, and it's the same with print-on-demand. So I'm interested to hear how this Heated Rivalry thing is going to play into this.
Lauren: Don’t worry, I'm here to tell you everything you need to know.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: But –
Matt: Is this like fanfiction? Like the last time you educated me on something and you really, you really got me with the Star Trek thing?
Lauren: Which I still think about months later. I – truly incredible work.
Matt: So is Heated Rivalry between Star Trek and Star Wars?
Lauren: It is not.
Matt: That would be really cool.
Lauren: It is not. It is between two rival hockey players.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: You know, we don't have to get into the minutia of the plot. Unless you really want to.
Matt: It's hockey romance, though?
Lauren: It's hockey romance.
Matt: It’s safe to say.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And it's probably spicy in nature, by the way that you're smiling.
Lauren: It definitely is.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: It definitely is.
Matt: That's all you need to say.
Lauren: But regardless of the content of the show.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: I think that there's a lot we could learn about from just the experience in general of what happened here. Again, in the same way that you just said that for the last episode, we're not assuming that publishers don't know how to use AI or whatever. They're just not.
Matt: Correct.
Lauren: For one reason or another. I'm not assuming anything about any of the publishers involved in the production of this book series. They might have had their reasons for not wanting to use a print-on-demand solution. Or they might have been kicking themselves the whole time, saying we're in the process of setting it up and just didn't set it up in time. You know, I don't have any inside information from the publisher themselves. So I'm not badmouthing them in any way. I just – as I was watching this unfold in real time, the whole time I was thinking, God, this would be a perfect opportunity to implement a hybrid solution here where a traditional publisher could supplement their inventory with print-on-demand books.
Matt: Which is essentially what indie creators do right now on their own, using print-on-demand and let's say Shopify or something. They don't have to deal with these types of issues.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: So. You know, if one of them gets lucky and hits a viral TikTok or however you say it or whatever you do –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – they're already set up print-on-demand, selling direct. You know what I mean? They don't have to...
[6:45] - What is Heated Rivalry and Why is it Relevant?
Matt: So, alright.
Lauren: Yeah. And we will talk –
Matt: Explain this.
Lauren: – a little bit about that too.
Matt: Because I’m still thoroughly lost on this whole Heated Rivalry issue.
Lauren: Okay. So Heated Rivalry was a book written by Rachel Reid.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: It's actually book two in a six book series, but it's like a relatively small book published by Carina Press originally, which is an imprint of Harlequin, back in March of 2019.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Last year it was repackaged. I actually talked about this, I just didn't name it. I talked about this book series in an episode last year because the –
Matt: Sneaky.
Lauren: – I thought it was really clever of the publisher to repackage the entire series in new style covers. So the original versions of them are real people on the covers. And then these new repackaged editions are illustrated. Because they were paying attention to trends in the industry.
Matt: I remember you talking about this, yeah.
Lauren: And they realized – yes, this is the book series that I was talking about.
Matt: Gotcha.
Lauren: So. Yes I did read these books long before the show was even announced. Thank you so very much. But anyway, this was a popular book series within its niche, but not overall a crazy big series. Nevertheless got picked up for an adaptation for the Canadian TV network Crave.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: That was announced…there was kind of buzz about it, you know, last January, but it was officially announced in June. So we knew this show was coming. And the whole time we're all kind of like, you know, fans of the book and the series and the genre are all kind of sitting there going, okay, this is a Canadian TV network. How we're gonna watch it in the US, how am I going to, like –
Matt: I've never heard of Crave. So, yeah.
Lauren: So this whole time leading up to this, Heated Rivalry the show, was supposed to come out on November 28th of 2025. And literally on November 19th, so ten days before and your birthday –
Matt: That’s my birthday.
Lauren: Yes, it is. HBO Max announced that they had obtained the streaming rights, and they were going to air it in real time. So the episodes were going to come out at the same time on HBO as they were airing in Canada. Ten days before. I don't know how much time the publisher had ahead of that. I don't know how much information they had ahead of time, but apparently they did not have enough time to properly prepare their inventory for it
Matt: So. Well, let me get this straight.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Let me understand. So, Harlequin repackaged the print editions in 2024?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: To go to an illustrative style over the kind of cringey like, real…
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And so they would have run off inventory, a couple thousand copies or whatever, depending on what sales were looking like at that time. And so you fast forward to when the TV show was going to drop. At this point. I mean, they know the TV show is coming out.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Right?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I mean, the, TV producers, they had to get the rights from either the author or the publisher. So the publisher knew. They would have known about the drop. So we've got a pretty big gap here in terms of existing inventory versus projected...
Lauren: Yeah. I think there's a lot of factors here. And again I want to be so clear that I'm not laying any blame on the publisher for this.
Matt: Not that they would care.
Lauren: Not that they would care either way. If anyone from Harlequin or Carina is listening to this, I'm a huge fan. I'm – no shade. Like so many of the books that I read come from the Carina Press.
Matt: They’re going to be knocking on your apartment door tomorrow, you and Rose are in big trouble.
Lauren: Let them. It's fine.
Matt: Okay, so HBO is going to drop it?
Lauren: Yes, and this is why I kind of want to lay out the timeline here. Because I think it's a really important factor to consider that, like, even if the publisher did know that this TV series was coming out. They probably were thinking, okay, you know, this is kind of a niche genre. We don't really know how much interest there's going to be. There are plenty of book to TV adaptations –
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: – that barely make it to the end of their first season before they've been canceled by Netflix or whoever else. They barely push the needle on sales, and they – it wasn't getting international release…until it was. And like, obviously, I'm sure that the publisher was made aware that a deal was being negotiated with HBO before they formally announced it. But even then, we know these things take time. In the traditional publishing model, we know that these things take time. We know that doing an offset print run –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – of 10,000 copies of a book is not something that you can do in a week.
Matt: Well, on top of that, they'll often change the cover again. They'll put the little gold seal on there that says now a major TV show.
Lauren: Which they didn't.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: They did not do a TV series tie-in edition. So these are all factors. In the same way that you can never predict virality, you can never predict when something–whether it's a backlist or a front list title–you can never predict accurately when something's really going to take off. Heated Rivalry turned out to be one of the most watched and highest rated TV shows of all of 2025. It broke multiple streaming records across different platforms, and –
Matt: Never heard of it.
Lauren: I – that's – you are not the target audience. So that's okay. But it – they couldn't have known. They could not have known that HBO was going to pick it up and that it was going to become like this massive phenomenon. It's a six episode like, limited series. It has been renewed for a second season. But, you know, they could not have predicted this. So I'm not saying that they could have predicted any of this or they should have. What I am saying is that there were a lot of opportunities to say, oh no, we accidentally have a major success on our hands. Good thing we have these solutions in place to make sure that we can get copies to people as soon as possible, as this demand is getting higher and higher.
Matt: Well explain why that's necessary.
Lauren: Okay. Well I will explain it in terms of numbers.
Matt: Cause so far all you’ve told me is that there's some TV show I've never heard of. It ended up doing really well.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: It’s tied to a book.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: I'm assuming that means there was a run on the book. But you're leaving me hanging here.
Lauren: So, these are numbers from BookScan. And again, to be clear, this is one of six books in a series.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: So these are –
Matt: It’s the second –
Lauren: This is –
Matt: – in a six books series.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Which also is kind of strange, but whatever.
Lauren: There's a valid reason
Matt: I don't want to hear it.
Lauren: – we can’t, we won't get into all that.
Matt: Okay. Thank you.
Lauren: So this was originally published in print in March of 2019. From March of 2019 to the end of 2025, that original print edition sold 3,800 copies.
Matt: So in almost six years, under 4,000 copies?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: Yep. So then those repackaged editions came out in November of 2024.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: And in just the two months at the end of that, November and December of 2024, sold under a thousand copies.
Matt: What do you mean under a thousand? Five copies or...
Lauren: 800-ish.
Matt: My book sold under a thousand copies.
Lauren: Okay, fair. Around 800 copies.
Matt: So far.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Okay. That's not bad.
Lauren: No, it's not.
Matt: 800-some copies in roughly two months.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: With new covers.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: I bought two of them.
Matt: There you go.
Lauren: One me one for a friend.
Matt: Okay. Well, that's not bad.
Lauren: By the end of November they had sold about 6,000 copies. In the week –
Matt: 2025.
Lauren: Yes. I'm sorry. Yeah.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: So in that week, whether it was from seeing trailers for the show, or like initial hype when the first – because the first two episodes dropped on the last Friday of November. So if there was, like, still immediate interest in that, people could still run out and get copies of it. They went from 835 copies to 6,000 copies by the end of November 2025.
Matt: Yeah, and in eleven months they did more, they did almost double what they did in the first six years.
Lauren: And then it, by the end of December 2025, they have now sold over 25,000 copies of just Heated Rivalry.
Matt: So in one month they did over 19,000 units.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: On top of the 6,000 from the previous eleven months.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah, they were probably grossly underprepared for that.
Lauren: Yes. They sold out. They sold through their entire inventory. Indie bookstores didn't have any. I can't tell you how much content I saw on social media from indie bookstores that were them like, here's our shelves empty of any of these books because we don't have any stock left. Or like, you know –
Matt: And what about online retailers?
Lauren: Online, online retailers temporarily backordered. Which is usually the sign that they know that the publisher has placed an order and there are more coming.
Matt: There's a PO, yeah.
Lauren: It's not out of print, but they can't take orders for it yet. And, you know, not for nothing but the timing involved in this. How many people do you think were like oh this would be a perfect holiday gift for somebody? I know somebody who's a big fan of this, or I know somebody who loves this show, and I'm going to buy the books for them.
Matt: Were you trying to buy me one for Christmas?
Lauren: I, I was trying to buy Paul a copy for Christmas. I tease him all the time about making him read hockey stuff.
Matt: Oh my goodness.
[15:24] - Is Backlist Scarcity a Realistic Concern for Most Publishers?
Lauren: But that's a very long winded way of saying they had a massive runaway success on their hands unexpectedly. And whether they were underprepared, overwhelmed, didn't expect this or something else went wrong entirely that we just don't know about. It was a very clear…at the end of the day, clear that they just relied too much on the existing traditional publishing model and didn't have any kind of backup in place. For how do we meet this demand when our supply has run out and we can't do anything to get a new inventory faster?
Matt: To be clear, for most traditional publishing houses it will vary based on who they use for distribution and printing, and you know, whether they're using Ingram Publishing Services or Hachette or… Those entities will basically handle everything. That is pretty common, or a commonplace thing where backlist titles, they don't get marketed. Maybe something happens five years later where it brings it back into relevance. Maybe they've got the foresight to see that and order some extra inventory. But this happens pretty regularly and things get back-ordered. If it's offset printing, it's going to take anywhere from a month to three months to get it, you know, landed back in retail, between printing and shipping. This is fairly common. Now, again, like I said at the top of the show, there are some traditional publishers who figured this out. They are using print-on-demand as a gap fill, right? So when inventory gets triggered as low or there's a quick run, right, you've got 800 copies in inventory and you just took in a thousand unit orders. They've got something that triggers and it switches it over to POD replenishment, and that's what we're talking about here.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah, for the most part, this does happen fairly regularly these days. Thanks to TikTok and more and more books being picked up for TV and movies and things like that. Whether it's social media virality or some other, you know, marketing spike in popularity, this is happening. It's a real thing. And a lot of publishers have not implemented a solution. It's not that solutions don't exist, but they've not implemented. And it's something that is as simple as, like we talked about, there's a lot of people listening to this or people that we talked to that are already doing this. And this is scalable. It's something that could have stopped a lot of people, including maybe yourself, from being upset that they couldn't get their hands on the book.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, personally, I own two copies of it, so I'm set. But.
Matt: You could have made a lot of money by renting out one of your copies.
Lauren: Maybe I could’ve. That's another thing too, because on Libby, like, good luck – there was a minute there where there was really a drought in attempting to get copies of any of the books in this series. Not even just Heated Rivalry, but any of the six books in the series.
Matt: Print?
Lauren: Print or ebook. Unless you were willing to pay for the ebook, anybody that was trying to, like, borrow them from the library. Very long waiting lists. Print sold out pretty much anywhere. They have gotten their inventory back up.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I saw a Tiktok yesterday –
Matt: That’s somebody on the phone -
Lauren: Oh yeah.
Matt: – with the printer going, we will pay double. Just get these done.
Lauren: Get them done as soon as possible.
Matt: Which is wild –
Lauren: Overnight them.
Matt: – considering it was holidays.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Every printer on the planet was slammed.
Lauren: Yeah. Yes. And we'll see. And it did get renewed for a second season. So you know, we'll see how they handle the demand the second time around. Maybe there will be more preparation for it. Maybe we will see a show tie-in edition instead of – Because that's another thing too, from what I've seen online, the new editions that have been reprinted are identical. They didn't add any changes. It doesn't have – I don't think it has the sticker –
Matt: They didn’t have time.
Lauren: Right. They didn't have time. They prioritize getting it out as quickly as possible, which is the right thing to do.
Matt: The only thing to do.
Lauren: The only thing to do. But if they'd had this stopgap in place, if they'd had this strategy in place where they could have had copies to send people on demand while they took the time to properly refill – not expedite, not pay extra, maybe do a repackage or whatever. Things could have been different.
Matt: It's wild that this happens though, because when you dig into the traditional publishing world and you look at where their revenues come from, most, if not all of them make more money off their backlist than they do their front lists, front list being new titles right when they first go to market. And not having these systems in place to protect yourself.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: To futureproof your inventory when virality hits or some sort of marketing surge happens, whether it's because the author all of a sudden got optioned by HBO or…it doesn't matter, some celebrity went on a talk show and just casually mentioned they just finished the book. Right? Like, there’re all different ways virality comes. It's not always just a TikTok thing. And you hear stories… Backlist is just such a strange beast. But it's just wild to me that every publisher doesn't have this stopgap in place these days.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Like, I get it. Ten years ago, this wasn't a problem.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: At least not to this degree. Backlist was backlist. You pretty much had enough, and then as your inventory started to dwindle down, you'd place a smaller offset order. You'd let it sit on the shelf. Which carries its own issues, right? When you have inventory sitting on a shelf, you're paying to have it warehoused and stored. Every time you do sell a copy, you're paying for somebody to go pick that book off the shelf, package it up, and ship it. There's an obsolescence rate that has to be applied. They depreciate. So every month that that book is sitting on the shelf on a pallet, it's depreciating the value. There's a write off at the end of the year, if you're lucky. There's a lot of overhead that comes with keeping a backlist inventory. So again, you have all these reasons that you really should switch over to POD replenishment.
Lauren: Exactly to that point. So okay, let’s say they over-ordered on a new print run of this, because they wanted to make sure they had all the inventory that they needed. And let's say they sell through half of that and they say okay, well, we know the second season's coming out in two years, so we know that these will eventually sell. So it's like, you know, it's not the end of the world. It's still going to be 2027 before those books sell.
Matt: Yeah, and you're still sitting on them.
Lauren: So you're gonna – yes. You're going to sit on them. You're not going to make profit on them. You're going to have to pay for warehousing them.
Matt: Yeah, storage –
Lauren: Storage.
Matt: Fulfillment.
Lauren: If you had them shipped out to bookstores, the bookstores will order copies of the books. And then if they don't sell through their inventory, they will ship them back to the publisher.
Matt: Yeah, they don’t want to sit on them either.
Lauren: So now you gotta pay – Yeah, they don't. And they have a lot less room than –
Matt: For sure.
Lauren: – the publishing warehouses do.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And that is going to cost the bookstore and the publisher money.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So, these are all things to try to keep in mind. And yes, absolutely, to Matt’s point. This happens all the time. One of the other biggest TV shows of 2025 was the series finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty, which was a book –
Matt: I also don't know what that is.
Lauren: – a YA. Again, not your demographic, did not expect you to. But that was a YA book series that came out in like 2009 or something like that. And in that case, the publisher had more time to plan for it. But that was six months ago. And look how everything has changed in six months. And who knows what's going to be the trending book in six months from now?
Matt: Yeah. Yeah.
[22:30] - What Could Publishers Have Done Differently?
Lauren: So basically, I think that while going through the process of waiting for the offset order to come through, Harlequin could have – and they are, they do have an ecommerce option on their site, you can buy directly from Harlequin on their website.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So this would have been possible for them, in theory, if they wanted to, if they had triggered a print-on-demand solution when the book was out of stock. When they said, okay, we know new inventory is coming, but if you don't want to wait, you can order a print-on-demand copy now, and that'll be shipped in three to five days instead of question mark, question mark, question mark amount of time.
Matt: Right. Yeah.
Lauren: People would have the option then. Maybe some people still want to say no, I want the special edition that they're going to be making post-show or whatever. I want to get it from my local indie. I don't want to have to wait for it. You guys don't ship to me, whatever the case may be. But they could have fulfilled some of the demand for it by making the books temporarily available as print-on-demand in the meantime.
Matt: Yeah. You know, in general, I think getting to a place where, in the publishing industry, in the world of books, print, specifically, if we can get to a place where all backlist is POD. I mean, imagine how much warehouse space is not needed at that point. When you talk about things like sustainability, environmental things that are repercussions of printing too many books, then they get returned, then they get pulped. If you just release something as front list, special edition, whatever, and then once it's considered backlist, immediately switch it over to POD replenishment, I think we're just in a better place at that point. It's going to take a while, but I agree. I think even stepping into it lightly and saying as a backup, as a failsafe, we have this POD stuff built in. Like you said, if they're selling direct from their website already, then the technology is pretty much already in place. It's just a matter of plugging in a provider there.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Pick one. Doesn't matter. Preferably us, but it really doesn't matter, right? Like, if the technology is already there, you just need to plug in the provider and the trigger at the inventory point when it hits zero. When inventory of pre-printed on the shelf hits zero, or five, flip it. You know what I mean? Like.
Lauren: Yeah, we're not, we're definitely not saying that it should entirely replace offset printing. We –
Matt: No
Lauren: We've talked about this –
Matt: No, no, no.
Lauren: – before and we'll say it again –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – like, we absolutely understand the time and place where offset printing is the correct option.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But this is a good backup solution. Matt–failsafe was a great word choice right there.
Matt: Thanks.
Lauren: Like absolutely, just have that as your backup plan, whatever the case may be. Why not? And if you –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If it's a quality issue, I feel like we can prove at this point that the margin between print-on-demand quality and offset quality pretty much doesn't exist anymore.
Matt: Well yeah, it depends on what you're printing, right?
Lauren: Well, yeah.
Matt: To be fair, offset has its place. Just like print-on-demand has its place. It's not only product based, but it comes down to a number of different things. But yeah, again, we're not saying print-on-demand is a straight up replacement for offset, we're saying it has its place too. It's not the argument of like, hey, traditional publishers need to switch from offset to POD. Not at all. And I mean, there's still stuff that can't be done print-on-demand, that can only be done offset. You can make some of the most beautiful books in the world through offset means. And as book nerds, like, we respect that. But I mean, there are situations where when you're talking about a standard paperback book or a standard hardcover book that doesn't have a ton of bells and whistles, and it needs to just get to market, get in somebody's hand so it can be enjoyed, POD is the option.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: It's the most efficient. It's the fastest. It's definitely the most environmentally friendly. It has its place and more and more we're seeing people finally, I think, making use of it. These are the situations where I think it's raising the red flag for people.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Finally. You know, when it starts affecting your bottom line, that's when people really take notice.
[26:23] - Other Factors POD Helps Mitigate
Matt: You mentioned something earlier, you touched on one of the reasons why a lot of people kind of still are potentially keeping their distance from a print-on-demand model. And you touched on the stigma of quality, right?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You know, so we talked about that. Like, when you talk about a standard book, printed book, right? Forget about really extreme embellishments or things like that, but just a straight up book, normal paperback or hardcover. The quality is… it's almost the same. The other thing is unit economics. When you offset print – and this is why big runs are done offset, and still should be – the unit economics are different. So offset you might pay per unit for a traditional five and a half by eight and a half paperback hockey romance book, 200 pages. You might pay a dollar something, two dollars and something per unit, at the high end if you're ordering tens of thousands or even five to ten thousand. Print-on-demand, that's going to be probably at least double or close to it. And so you often will hear, well, the unit economics are such that print-on-demand is not efficient. You know what's not efficient? All those orders you probably missed out on because it was on backorder, it wasn't available. And you'll never know if you’ll get those orders back again or not. Whereas you could have fulfilled those orders using print-on-demand and took a dollar or two hit to your margin for that time being, and still fulfilled those orders and kept that reader satisfied. There's lots of reasons why the unit economics argument no longer makes any sense. When you balance out the unit economics of offset and include the warehousing that we talked about, the fulfillment that we talked about, where somebody has to physically grab that book off a shelf, package it and ship it, the depreciation for that unit as it sits on that warehouse shelf that you're paying for every month versus print-on-demand, where it's only printed and shipped when it's bought, again the unit economics actually start to even out. So, the two biggest stigmas and drawbacks that people try to really put up there when you talk about a print-on-demand model versus an offset warehouse fulfillment model, if that's the argument you're taking, is usually quality and unit economics. And they're just not...they're not strong arguments anymore, these days. And again, when you combine the two, front list offset, backlist print-on-demand, you don't run into these virality issues like your hockey romance just did, and some of these others. So yeah.
Lauren: I think another thing that kind of goes hand in hand with that is the timing of it all.
Matt: Mmm.
Lauren: I'm not a super big fan of the conversation of like, America's attention span is dying. Like it's rapidly decreasing. We all consume content in like five second, ten second video clips these days. Whether or not –
Matt: You're not a fan of it, or you don't believe it, or – explain what you mean here.
Lauren: I think it's a sweeping generalization that… We can't sit here and say, like, Americans are only consuming short form content right now while also having a conversation about how people are mad that a six book series is sold out. Because clearly people have the attention span to sit down and read multiple books or watch a six episode – So I'm not saying I disagree with it.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I'm just saying I think it's too broad strokes.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: So that's not part of the conversation necessarily. But we do live in a very fast paced, 24 hour news cycle.
Matt: Oh, of course.
Lauren: Culture cycle.
Matt: Yes. Yes.
Lauren: World right now. So, you know, we live in a place that by this time next month, something entirely different is going to be trending.
Matt: Oh, next week.
Lauren: Absolutely. Yes. But like.
Matt: Tomorrow.
Lauren: Sure. Who knows? Something could come out this Friday that could change the game entirely.
Lauren: But the traditional publishing model is still one that is not designed to move at that pace.
Lauren: In the last episode –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: We talked about the idea of you want to try to put out a title that you want to get it out to market as quickly as possible.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: We're still talking about months in –
Matt: Oh.
Lauren: – in the traditional publishing industry.
Matt: Easily. Yeah.
Lauren: So.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I said earlier that the TV show The Summer I Turned Pretty was like, the It Girl of the summer. Let's say that while that was happening, publishers were out there going, okay quick, we gotta acquire some books that are a love triangle between a girl and two brothers, because that's what the premise of the show is. Like, okay, we got to do that. If they got that book to market as quickly as possible, it still probably took four to six months to do so. So that book's coming out right now. And right now nobody cares about a love triangle between a girl and two brothers. Everybody cares about the rival hockey players that have been having a secret love affair for a decade.
Matt: Well, not everybody cares.
Lauren: Well.
Matt: Let me let me broaden this for other people listening who are like me –
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: – and don't care about hockey romance. I was talking to our friend Joe Pulizzi a couple of weeks ago, and he has a friend who is publishing a book. And has been approached by traditional publishing houses, a few. This is nonfiction that focuses on AI, various aspects of AI. This person is very intelligent on the subject, is thought of as one of the leading people in AI, was approached by a couple different traditional publishers. He's probably going to self-publish the book through one avenue or another, probably use a hybrid publisher. But the reason why he made that decision, to not use traditional publishing, is none of them could guarantee him a release date before spring of 2027.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Now this is a book about AI.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Like, spring of 2027? That book will be way out of date.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Spring of 2027, the initial launch would have to actually be the tenth revision of the book. And so yeah the production cycle, the timeline for traditional, you're right, is something that it's probably the main aspect of traditional publishing that has not kept up with the times. They've certainly evolved their financial structures, their contracts, you know, their acquisition strategies and things like that. They've definitely evolved in other areas. But when it comes to production, not at all. Yeah, you're right. That's crazy. And again, I don't know anything about hockey romance, but I assume you're correct that right now, a lot of people – not everybody, but a lot of people – care about it. A month from now, maybe nobody cares about it.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: So.
Lauren: Don't worry, I’ll still care about it.
Matt: – timing is critical. You're right. Speed to market.
Lauren: Yes, timing and speed to market. Especially when it is something where it is you trying to capitalize on a big trend or a big viral moment or something like that. So.
Matt: Like spicy hockey romance.
Lauren: Look, the girls are finally having their moment, okay? Let us, let us have it. This has been my like, genre of choice for the last two years. I'm very happy that it's finally getting its moment in the sun.
Matt: Can confirm. I first learned about hockey romance from you.
Lauren: You're welcome.
Matt: At least a year ago.
Lauren: You're so welcome.
Matt: Let's talk about a few more things that –
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: – can be done to mitigate –
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: – these issues from happening.
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: These extended production timelines that basically prohibit traditional publishing from being able to capitalize and make use of trends and virality and things like that, for example. We talked in episode…the last episode, 101, about using AI for some of that stuff.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Can they implement some of these workflows using AI tools to speed that process up?
Lauren: And to be clear, if you didn't listen to the episode, not using AI to –
Matt: Yeah, we won’t go into it, but yeah.
Lauren: – to like, actually do that workflow, but using it to help you tighten up that timeline so you could get it to market as quickly as possible.
Matt: Well. And there are things in the workflow depending on the specific publisher. But yes, the point is, are there tools you can use to tighten up that workflow?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: To tighten up that timeline specifically. Even if the AI tools are being used for certain things that you know might normally take longer, just simply because there's a period of time where it sits in somebody's inbox and has to wait for acknowledgement or something. Repackaging these out of print titles with POD replenishment. Setting these fulfillment triggers in place so that it doesn't matter what book it is, if it's in your catalog and it hits virality, or some other type of content spike or marketing spike, the POD replenishment program is going to kick in and cover all those orders. There are things that can be done that can be put in place to mitigate all of these, so we don't have to deal with this kind of stuff going forward.
Lauren: You actually mentioned this, before we started recording. So I want to give you credit because it was just not an original idea from me.
Matt: I haven't heard it yet, but I'll take it.
Lauren: But absolutely yes. Repackaging out-of-print titles, making those things available and stuff like that. But this is also applicable to front list titles too.
Matt: Oh yeah.
Lauren: Also in December, the docuseries about the Eras Tour aired on Disney Plus. And there is like a maybe twenty or thirty second clip in one of the episodes where Taylor Swift is listening to an audiobook. I haven't checked to see what sales numbers look like on that book, but I can guarantee you there was some kind of major spike in interest in that book after that episode aired. Because the only reason that I know what the book was was because I saw twenty different TikToks of people saying what it was. And it was a newer release title. So it could happen to not necessarily some book that came off your backlist from ten years ago, but it could be a book that's still pretty top of the list, but there was some kind of major spike, and suddenly you sold through all your copies and you need a solution until you can replenish it.
Matt: Right. Yeah. Holdover for sure.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: No, I mean, that's yeah, I guess a lot of people actually – I was starting to laugh at you paying such attention to what's going on in that, that you saw the book she was reading. But I've actually done that before too, and I know others have, so I –
Lauren: Oh my God, I’ll, I will like –
Matt: I won’t make fun of you.
Lauren: I literally like, when I'm on a plane and I see somebody reading, I'm like contorting myself to see what the book is. And, well, first of all, I'm very nosy. But second of all, I just like seeing what people are reading.
Matt: I share that, yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I agree with you. Yeah.
[36:05] - What Can Authors or Indie Publishers Learn From this Success?
Lauren: But, yeah, I think these are just another example of watching in real time where things are happening and the people that they're happening to don't seem to be taking the best steps that they possibly could.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And I think that we've seen a lot of things recently, whether it's adaptations or viral moments or trends, or different product types, whatever it is, I think we've seen a lot of things lately where people have realized that they have to adjust. You have to adapt, adapt or die. Like that's kind of where we are in a lot of different ways right now. And I'm really interested to see what the publishing industry as a whole learns from this experience, because I think there's a lot to learn from this. I do want to be clear that this is a learning opportunity for, I think everybody in the industry.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Not – this is not directed at Harlequin. It's also not directed at like…okay, one out of every 10,000 books gets lucky enough to be made into a TV show. So what about that other nine thousand…9,999 of us?
Matt: Math.
Lauren: Math is hard. You know, like this doesn't matter to us. It absolutely does. Whether you're a publisher or an author, even if it's not your book specifically that's having a viral moment, that's having a pop culture moment or trending in some way, there are still ways for you to get involved in the moment that's happening.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And the more prepared you are for it, the better. I'm telling you right now, every single big and small publisher that I know that has any books on their list that are queer sports romance are scrambling to try to get those books available, publicized, get them in front of people. And this is also a very interesting example, because a lot of this specific genre is indie and self-published.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So we're seeing a lot of that happening, where we're seeing a lot of people that are like hey, this is my area of expertise, and it's people that are outside of the traditional publishing industry. And now we've got a lot of people in trad pub that are turning around and going, okay, we gotta–who's a, a big name self-published author that we can scoop up their books immediately and have them out next month? So there's a lot of learning opportunity here for how to be prepared for things like that, and how to pay attention to what's going on across the two different types of publishing industries.
Matt: Yeah. So how can indie creators and authors and maybe even smaller publishers, solo publishers, apply this? What could they learn from your hockey romance inventory depletion scandal?
Lauren: Well, I think that first and foremost, it's another great reminder that if you are not paying attention to what's going on in your own industry, then you are severely dropping the ball.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Because anybody, you know we –
Matt: That’s profound.
Lauren: Well, we've talked about this, should’ve said dropping the puck.
Matt: The – oh, that would have been so good.
Lauren: I'm not very good at the hockey puns. I don't really understand hockey all that much.
Matt: Do you want to do it over and you can edit the other one out?
Lauren: No, it's okay.
Matt: All right. Man.
Lauren: It's all right.
Matt: You blew it.
Lauren: I know. But I do think that, you know, we talk about it – whether it's fiction or nonfiction, we talk about this all the time, where if you are just creating content to create content, putting it up, throwing it out into the void and then not engaging with the people in your community, in your industry.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Then you're only doing half the job. And I think this is a great example of that, because right now a great opportunity for – or I guess not right now because the book is back in stock, but in the month of December, a great opportunity for indie authors that are controlling their own narrative could have been, hey, while that book is sold out and you can't get any copies of it, my book is right here. And it's also a sports romance. Or it's also like, enemies to lovers, or rivals, or whatever it is, like whatever, however it's tangentially related. Like, if you like that, here's a thing that I can sell you in the meantime.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So it's important to stay up on those trends. And it's also important not just from a sales perspective, but also from a marketing perspective. Because like I just said, publishers are scrambling right now to find their own versions of books. And this happens every time there's any kind of like, big success. It's like how for five years after The Hunger Games came out, every single book was the next Hunger Games, for fans of The Hunger Games.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Whatever.
Matt: Comp titles are a big –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – marketing ploy. For sure.
Lauren: Absolutely. And if you have, as a self-published or an indie published author, or an indie publisher that has a few titles on your list that are applicable to whatever moment is happening, you want to make sure that they show up in search results.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: When people from traditional publishing houses or agents are searching for them, whether that's searching for your website, searching social media –
Matt: Well.
Lauren: – searching on bookstores –
Matt: So.
Lauren: – searching on Goodreads.
Matt: Before I forget this I’m gonna interrupt you, because I typically don't focus on metadata very often. But you can go in and update the metadata on your titles and your keywords. Whether it's in Bowker with your ISBNs or on Amazon, or wherever you're selling. This is important because when something like this hits and, like you're saying, your book is similar to, let's say, the one that's experiencing all of this virality right now, go in and update your metadata as well. Because when people are looking for comp titles or other similar titles, oftentimes that metadata is what's triggering the discoverability there. So again, if your title is similar to Heated Rivalry and it's hockey romance or whatever, go in and update your metadata if it doesn't already contain the relevant keywords or things like that. That gives you a better shot at discoverability. Because I know where you're going with that, but these traditional publishers, they're not necessarily finding new authors via Google Search –
Lauren: Right.
Matt: – all the time. You know what I mean?
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Like, they're in other catalogs, they're in other ways, and doing other things, and trying to find data by other means. But this is just another way to make sure that you may potentially come up, is by making sure your metadata is cleaned, up to date. You can update that metadata on a fairly regular basis, but I would certainly do it if your title or titles are very similar to one that is experiencing a big, big, boost right now. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. I think that's a really golden opportunity for a lot of people.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's the other 9,999 of us. Just because one book went viral doesn't mean everyone is going to go viral, but it still means that you have opportunities to seize that moment too. Without your own book going viral, there are still ways for you to jump in there. I mean, this –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – especially with books, especially with fiction, this is absolutely applicable to nonfiction too, but especially with fiction. With any kind of media like this, whether it's Stranger Things, whether it's Heated Rivalry, Game of Thrones, whatever it is, any time any of these shows or movies have a big moment, every bookstore that you follow on Instagram, every publisher winds up doing some kind of like, are you desperate to find something else that gives you the same feeling as the Stranger Things finale did? Here are our five favorite books that give found family vibes, or surviving the apocalypse with your friends vibes, or whatever. And they're all obviously books that are sold by that publisher or whatever the case is.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: If there are any authors that are still listening to this that are like, great, how do I do that? How do I do any of those things? I will link a couple episodes in the show notes that might help you out. We did two in the last couple of months. Maximizing your first impression in the attention economy, and then the discoverability in the age of generative AI search. I think both really cover a lot of…whether it's putting your best foot forward online or maximizing your metadata –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – and stuff like that. So I'll have that all linked in the show notes, if you want to go check those out, instead of listening to me ramble about hockey players for another twenty minutes.
Matt: Yeah.
[44:00] - Wrap Up
Matt: I’m gonna do something different.
Lauren: Yeah?
Matt: What are you reading right now?
Lauren: I'm actually in the middle of a really good audiobook that's a novella, actually. It's called Cinder House by Freya Marske, who is also one of my favorite authors. And it's a Cinderella retelling, but Cinderella was killed by her stepmother and is now a ghost that haunts the house that her stepmother and stepsisters live in. It's really interesting so far. I'm about halfway through it.
Matt: I just started a series. I'm really into Japanese literature right now.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: I didn't realize this until recently, the Japanese, they had a really specific way of doing murder mysteries, you know, in the thirties, forties, and fifties. I read a book over the holidays called Tokyo Express and that really got me hooked. And so I'm now reading a series by Seishi Yokomizo. But they're just really fun murder mysteries. And the Japanese have a way of writing murder mysteries where a lot of the clues and things that they use to solve these things are all very much math or numbers oriented.
Lauren: Really?
Matt: It's really cool and interesting. But it's a really cool series so far. The first one was The Honjin Murders. It was really good, and I just started the second one. Thankfully, this series was picked up…I think it's Pushkin that picked it up. And they've translated it, because it was all in Japanese until fairly recently.
Lauren: Is that why you were doing Duolingo? Are you still doing –
Matt: No.
Lauren: How's your Duolingo streak?
Matt: My streak is broken. I do need to pick it back up. But no, that's not why I was learning Japanese on Duolingo.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: I was just learning Japanese because I thought it'd be cool.
Lauren: Fair enough.
Matt: In general I'm just fascinated by all things Japanese right now, and Japan. And so yeah, I've picked up a bunch of different Japanese books, mostly murder mystery stuff.
Lauren: Cool.
Matt: And Japanese horror, which is really cool, too.
Lauren: I knew that, I knew they were – had a very, like, definitive interest in horror. Like, I know that it's like, very much its own – Not my, not my genre at all. So, unfortunately, will never experience that on my own. But I knew they were kind of known for that. I didn't realize there was also a whole, like, murder mystery...
Matt: Yeah, the murder mystery stuff is pretty clean though, and fun. It's just, it is hard at first because every book has a table of characters in the front. And I always swore I’d never read a book where I had to learn thirty-seven character names, or a family tree, or a map of the island that they lived on, and here's the temple, and here's the main – but it's actually pretty cool.
Lauren: No romantasy for you?
Matt: No, no romantasy for me. No hockey puck romance. I'll stick with the Japanese murder mysteries for now.
Lauren: That sounds good. I like that.
Matt: All right, anything else?
Lauren: I don't think so. I did discover this morning that on the desktop version of Spotify, it's very obvious how to leave comments on episodes. So if you are listening to us on Spotify, please leave us a comment. Let us know –
Matt: On desktop. On your laptop. Yeah?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: What about on your phone? Or like –
Lauren: I didn't check, and I can't pull it up right now because I'm afraid of noise coming out of my phone while we're recording. But I will take a look. You can always leave us a comment on YouTube.
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: Or on any of Lulu's social media channels.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You can email us a podcast@lulu.com. Or you can come back next week and join us for another new episode.
Matt: Yep, you can absolutely do that.
Lauren: All the above.
Matt: Perfect.
Lauren: Great.
Matt: All right.
Lauren: Thanks for listening.
Matt: Later.