Angela Bole to Succeed Fran Toolan at the Firebrand Group

The Firebrand Group (firebrandtech.com), the book industry’s leading technology company for cutting edge software and services that enable publisher success, announced today that Angela Bole, current CEO at the Independent Book Publishers Association (ibpa-online.org), will succeed Firebrand CEO Fran Toolan on February 1, 2023. Toolan, who founded Firebrand as Quality Solutions, Inc. in 1987, passes the reins to Bole after 35 years as the company’s sole CEO. He will remain on the Firebrand Group Board of Directors post transition.

Upon launching Firebrand Technologies, Toolan understood that the publishing industry was a unique and creative business that needed efficient tools and workflow processes to thrive and be profitable. “These tools must accentuate the creativity in publishing,” he said at the time, “not hinder it.”

Today, the Firebrand Group includes Firebrand Technologies, NetGalley, and Supadu. Firebrand Technologies Title Management Enterprise Software and Eloquence on Demand service headline a group of technologies that help publishers track and manage titles from pre-acquisition through their long tail of sales. NetGalley helps provide excitement about titles by connecting eBook and audio content with reviewers. And the newest addition to the Firebrand family of services, Supadu, is the leading provider of publisher e-commerce solutions in the US and UK.

In February 2021, Firebrand was acquired by Media Do International (MD-i), the US-based subsidiary of Japan’s Media Do Co., Ltd, one of the largest ebook distribution companies in the world retaining the largest share of Japan’s $4.5 billion eBook market.

“With the support of MD-i, the Firebrand Group is growing and innovating at an unparalleled rate of speed,” said Toolan. “The opportunities in front of us are very exciting, and I’m equally excited that Angela will be here to guide us going forward.”

Said Daihei Shiohama, CEO of MD-i: “Both here and in Japan, we are so excited to have Angela succeed Fran. We are determined to provide utmost support to Firebrand Group with Angela as new CEO. With the annual growth rate of close to 20% in Japan’s digital publishing market where NFT, XR, and other diversified elements stimulate the publishing industry, we are convinced that Angela will lead the group to uplift the global publishing industry’s expansion.”

Bole, a 2019 Publishers Weekly notable person of the year, began her career at an independent bookstore in Jackson, WY before moving to NYC in 2005 to pursue a Masters in book publishing from New York University. While in NYC, she held various positions with the Book Industry Study Group (BISG)–including a stint as interim executive director–where she spearheaded research into consumer attitudes toward ebook reading, oversaw initiatives supporting the industry’s transition to ISBN-13, and developed best practices and other documentation for use of the ONIX and EPUB standards. Bole served as treasurer of the International Digital Publishers Forum (IDPF) from 2011 to 2014, before moving to Manhattan Beach, CA to become ED and later CEO of IBPA, where she has stabilized and grown operations for the past nine years.

“During her years leading IBPA, Angela has transformed the organization into the leading association for advocating and supporting the growing community of independent publishers,” said current IBPA Board Chair Karla Olson (Director, Patagonia Books). “During the last two challenging years in particular, Angela made certain IBPA provided innovative and essential member support and increased efforts to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion within all aspects of the association. IBPA will be forever grateful to Angela for her leadership, her vision, and her passion for publishing.”

Bole officially assumes the position of Firebrand Group CEO on February 1, 2023. When asked what she hopes to achieve, she said, “Firebrand has been powering the publishing industry for over 30 years through quality software solutions and a dedicated and committed staff. Given all we’ve learned over the past few years, I hope to build upon what’s already working to enable even more efficiencies for the companies Firebrand serves. I know this will be a team effort; I couldn’t be more excited to join and lead the team.”

About the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) – Founded in 1983 to support independent publishers nationwide, the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) leads and serves the independent publishing community through advocacy, education, and tools for success. With over 4,000 members, IBPA is the largest publishing association in the U.S. Its vision is a world where every independent publisher has the access, knowledge, and tools needed to professionally engage in all aspects of an inclusive publishing industry. For more information, visit ibpa-online.org.

About the Firebrand Group – The Firebrand Group, consisting of Firebrand Technologies, NetGalley, and Supadu, provides leading software and services to help publishers achieve success. The Firebrand Group is owned by Media Do International (MD-i), the US-based subsidiary of Japan’s Media Do Co., Ltd, one of the largest ebook distribution companies in the world retaining the largest share of Japan’s ebook market. For more information, visit firebrandtech.com. For more information on Media Do’s services and corporate divisions, visit mediado.jp/english.

Media Do International acquires Supadu Ltd.

Media Do International, the US-based subsidiary of Media Do Ltd., in Japan, today announced they have acquired all of the shares of Supadu Ltd. Mark Harvie-Watt, CEO and Co-Founder of Supadu Ltd., will remain on as CEO indefinitely.

Media Do International acquired Firebrand Technologies and NetGalley in January 2021, and Supadu has worked closely with Firebrand for the last five years.
Supadu CEO, Mark Harvie-Watt, said about the deal: “I am really excited to be working with Media Do, Firebrand and NetGalley. We have worked closely with these companies for a number of years and know how important they are for many of our customers. This deal will bring closer synergies, more integrated solutions, and provide our customers with an exciting road map for years to come.”

“We are excited to bring Supadu into the Media Do family as part of the Firebrand Group,” says Daihei Shiohama, CEO of Media Do International. “We look forward to collaborating more closely with them going forward and to expand its business opportunities all around the world including Japan.”

The MEDIA DO Group aspires to make the greatest possible contributions to the growth of the overall publishing market by leveraging its cutting-edge technologies and distinctive position in the industry to promote the popularization of eBooks and other digital content. Media Do International is based in San Diego, California.

Supadu Ltd, based in the UK, was founded in 2010 and is the lead provider of website and e-commerce solutions for publishers. It has more than 250 global customers, primarily in Europe and the US. Supadu serves publishers of all sizes and across trade, academic and university press spaces. With the Supafolio metadata management platform at its core, Supadu uses book data to build beautiful websites with enhanced title visibility, advanced search functions and rich user experience. Supadu has a range of integrated e-commerce solutions and offers extensive support throughout the website build and beyond.

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About Firebrand Technologies
Firebrand Technologies is dedicated to providing leading software and services to help publishers achieve success. Firebrand provides steadfast leadership and seamless information flow throughout the entire publishing process. Title Management Enterprise Software tracks titles from pre-acquisition through post-production, marketing, and sales. Eloquence on Demand is the industry gold standard for implementing ONIX and maximizing control of how data and assets reach the marketplace. Eloquence on Alert’s proprietary title performance monitoring service collects key, hard-to-access details about your products from major online marketplaces and review sites, and puts all of that information directly at your fingertips. FlightDeck is the most powerful EPUB Quality Assurance and validation tool available. NetGalley helps publishers connect with a large and growing number of book influencers, creating buzz about your books, and getting key feedback, before publication.

Title Management Desktop is back!

Editor’s Note: In case it was not clear, this was all an elaborate April Fool’s Joke.

Are you worried about security? Are you pining for the good old days when all of your work was done in desktop applications instead of on websites?

Well, we have the perfect solution for you! Title Management 5.1 for Desktops!

The Title Information page in Title Management 5.1

Title Management 5.1 does away with most of the complex configurations and special capabilities of Title Management 10.5, and returns users to the previous heightened state of efficiency that comes with fewer features and functions. For example, the Home screen is much more streamlined in version 5.1, just showing the Firebrand logo instead of those complex-looking dashboards

The Home screen in Title Management 5.1

In addition to these awesome feature reductions, we are excited to announce that Title Management Desktop will now be available on three CD-ROM disks! No more fumbling with twelve different floppy disks just to install the application.

Are you considering a change? Would you like to know more? Please see our complete overview video here!

Media Do International acquires Firebrand Technologies and NetGalley, LLC

Media Do International, the US based subsidiary of Media Do Ltd., in Japan, today announced that they have acquired all of the shares of Quality Solutions/Firebrand Technologies and NetGalley from their current shareholders. Fran Toolan, founder and CEO of the companies, will remain on as CEO for a minimum of three years.

“We are very pleased to bring Firebrand and NetGalley into the Media Do family,” says Daihei Shiohama, CEO of Media Do International. “We have long respected the works of the Firebrand Group, and are very excited about the prospects of working closely with them in the future.”

“Media Do has been NetGalley’s partner in Japan since 2016, and we know each other quite well,” says Toolan. “Firebrand and NetGalley have never been stronger as companies, and I believe that becoming part of the Media Do Group ensures continuity for our customers and opportunities for our team for many years to come.”

Media Do Co., Ltd. is one of the largest eBook distribution companies in the world and retains the largest share of Japan’s $3.7 billion eBook market*, and is based in Tokyo. Media Do International is based in San Diego, California. Media Do Group’s mission is to realize a sound creative cycle for copyrighted works by distributing them as widely as possible under fair use and maximizing profits to publishers/authors and rights owners. Quality Solutions/Firebrand Technologies was founded in 1987. NetGalley, LLC was acquired in 2008. Firebrand and NetGalley provide marketing and technology services for more than 500 publishers worldwide. NetGalley, LLC operates websites in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Japan.

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About Firebrand Technologies
Firebrand Technologies is dedicated to providing leading software and services to help publishers achieve success. Firebrand provides steadfast leadership and seamless information flow throughout the entire publishing process. Title Management Enterprise Software tracks titles from pre-acquisition through post-production, marketing, and sales. Eloquence on Demand is the industry gold standard for implementing ONIX and maximizing control of how data and assets reach the marketplace. Eloquence on Alert’s proprietary title performance monitoring service collects key, hard-to-access details about your products from major online marketplaces and review sites, and puts all of that information directly at your fingertips. FlightDeck is the most powerful EPUB Quality Assurance and validation tool available. NetGalley helps publishers connect with a large and growing number of book influencers, creating buzz about your books, and getting key feedback, before publication.

New Years Resolutions for Publishers

Welcome to 2021! The time has come again for us to reflect on where we are and make goals for where we want to be when the end of this new year rolls around.

As you consider your publishing goals and plans for 2021, we’d like to offer a few suggestions to help you increase sales and build for a better future.

1. Diversify your lineup

When the COVID-19 shutdowns started last March we had no idea that those shutdowns would lead to the changes we saw in book sales over the course of the year. Publishers with a wide array of titles, and especially titles in specific categories, were much more likely to see success in the midst of those changing buying patterns. There is no telling what the future might hold, so diversification of your publishing programs is looking like a solid business decision for many publishers. If you have the ability to spread out your list into some of the better-selling categories this year, that might be a worthy goal.

2. Enhance your metadata to drive more online sales

The percentage of book sales that were transacted online last year compared to in-store could be as high as 85%, and numerous research reports over the last few years have proven that online sales are impacted directly by the quality of the metadata you send to partners. The recent shift to online sales channels has also lead to a shift in backlist title sales, as readers look for content that interests them and are not limited by the space available on bookstore shelves, typically taken by newer titles.

This year, we encourage you to take the time to engage the metadata on all of your titles, including your backlist, in targeted ways.

  • Create at least 200 characters of keywords for each title
  • Add book excerpts to your Eloquence feed (in the Comments section)
  • Add other data elements, such as Product Details and Prizes (new section for Prizes now available!)
  • Clean up your book descriptions, and add bolded Lead-Ins to the top
  • Get in the habit of linking related titles in the Title Relationships section

These and other cleanup and enhancement tasks really can make an impact on your sales.

3. Watch your titles, fix issues, and grab opportunities quickly

At the Community Conference in November we heard how Our Daily Bread Publishing increased their sales by actively watching their titles on retail sites and fixing issues that arose from bad data, missing cover images, third party sellers taking the Buy Box, and more.

You, too, can watch your titles daily, and gain all the benefits of a powerful tool that warns you when issues arise and opportunities emerge. Take a look at our Eloquence on Alert platform, the most powerful and flexible title performance monitoring system available.

We hope you have a wonderful 2021, and we look forward to hearing how these and other resolutions help you navigate the ever-changing waters we are in.

Firebrand Technologies Launches Eloquence on Alert

Firebrand Technologies, a trusted leader in technology services for the publishing industry, knows that smarter decisions come from better intelligence. With that in mind, Firebrand is pleased to announce the public launch of Eloquence on Alert, its newest title performance monitoring product.

Eloquence on Alert’s proprietary data gathering service collects key, hard-to-access details about products from major online marketplaces and review sites, to put all that information directly at publishers’ fingertips. Firebrand has been collecting, reviewing, and analyzing this specific data internally for over two years, and has developed a robust tool that is targeted to the unique needs of publishers. With this new application, publishers can see and interact with important data about price changes, missing buy buttons, products that suddenly disappear, third party sellers taking over the buy box, and more.

These details are made available in a dedicated interface, with powerful alerts, search, and classification tools to help publishers address problems and leverage opportunities like never before.

“Eloquence on Alert helps publishers identify issues and trends that would be very difficult to discern otherwise, saving them time and money and allowing for the reallocation of resources to new or different projects,” said Catherine Toolan, Firebrand’s Director of Eloquence Services.

The Eloquence on Alert service is available to publishers via a monthly subscription, and is not bundled with other Firebrand products. Find out more and sign up for a demo at http://eloquenceonalert.com.

To learn more about Firebrand Technologies, please visit: www.firebrandtech.com, or email info@firebrandtech.com.

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About Firebrand Technologies
Firebrand Technologies is dedicated to providing leading software and services to help publishers achieve success. Firebrand provides steadfast leadership and seamless information flow throughout the entire publishing process. Title Management Enterprise Software tracks titles from pre-acquisition through post-production, marketing, and sales. Eloquence on Demand is the industry gold standard for implementing ONIX and maximizing control of how data and assets reach the marketplace. Eloquence on Alert’s proprietary title performance monitoring service collects key, hard-to-access details about your products from major online marketplaces and review sites, and puts all of that information directly at your fingertips. FlightDeck is the most powerful EPUB Quality Assurance and validation tool available. NetGalley helps publishers connect with a large and growing number of book influencers, creating buzz about your books, and getting key feedback, before publication.

Announcing Elephants on Demand!

[Editor’s note: In case it was not clear, this was an April Fool’s joke. No elephants were harmed in the making of this video.]

Firebrand is constantly innovating and evolving — looking for the most effective strategies to help publishers succeed in the marketplace.

We are excited to announce the launch of our newest metadata delivery service, Elephants on Demand!

Elephants on Demand helps you get your heaviest and most important metadata where it needs to go. No longer do you have to worry about an intern dropping your fragile metadata on the way to the retailer, or one of the monkeys running the vacuum tubes getting their tubes crossed. No longer will your fully-fleshed-out metadata be left in the office because the designated carrying service can’t lift anything with a Table of Contents, an Excerpt, and 10 Review Quotes.

Elephants on Demand can handle any metadata load you give it, from the smallest to the largest. We have scoured the globe to find the fastest and hardiest elephants available, and we have already started to put them to work for you.

“This is a truly remarkable innovation in metadata delivery, which I know will make a huge impact on visibility,” said Catherine Toolan, Director of Elephant Services at Firebrand. “We have already been impressed with how quickly the service has been accepted by major retailers, and we are looking forward to expanding the reach of the service internationally with our upcoming Elephant Seal expansion.”

For more information on this new service, please watch our introductory video below.

Amazon 250 Byte Keywords Limit

We have been receiving reports for the last week or two that Amazon has set a limit on the number of keywords that will be indexed for books sold through Vendor Central. This limitation was previously only in place for Seller Central, but Amazon recently updated the documentation for Vendor Central to reflect the limitation, as well. The Vendor Central documentation specifically states:

Our system limits the length of the generic keyword/search terms attribute to less than 250 bytes. It is still possible to go over the limit, but if you do, our search engine will not index any of your entries.

Some clients have been in contact with Vendor Central Support and have received email and phone confirmation that the new limitation does apply to books, and to metadata delivered via ONIX, not just to metadata manually entered in Vendor Central.

We are taking this potential change seriously at Firebrand, and are looking for hard evidence that the limitation is actually being applied to titles. However, so far we have not seen that hard evidence. Also, in our experience Amazon’s support team is not always up-to-date on the technical requirements or application of rules when it comes to ONIX deliveries. These points make us cautious about jumping the gun on changing how keywords are handled in Title Management, Eloquence on Demand, or our Keywords service.

As we are running tests and looking for evidence of if and how this limitation is being applied, we encourage our clients to stay the course and not make changes to their current keywords programs. Again, we don’t have any hard evidence of keywords for titles not being indexed. There is a chance that changing the keywords currently applied to titles could negatively affect your sales rank for those titles unnecessarily. Even if Amazon is enforcing this new rule, they may not be (and from our current tests, are not) enforcing it on already-submitted metadata, choosing instead to only apply it when the keywords are refreshed.

If you have any hard evidence about this issue, especially evidence that the 250 byte limitation has been applied to your titles, making all keywords become un-indexed, please contact Joshua Tallent (joshua@firebrandtech.com) with that information.

We will update this blog post in the future as we learn more.