Authors have a unique chance right now to see two live demonstrations of Ingram’s Aerio in online bookselling.
Aerio (originally Aer.io)—created by Ron Martinez, a book-industry developer and consultant in San Francisco—was acquired by Ingram Content in December 2015. Aerio is what’s called a distributed network and native retail. It creates sales points that anyone can establish online (that’s the distributed part), and a point of sale then becomes native because it lives in whatever spot you find or establish for it.
Confused yet? The best way to understand it is to see it in action. Books against the Storm is Aerio in operation, a site that can allow anyone to purchase any book in Ingram’s 14 million-title catalogue, with the profit (about 20 percent of the book’s retail price, Martinez tells us) going to three charities in Houston’s vast recovery effort following Hurricane Harvey.
Aside from the humanitarian element of this endeavor—supplemented by a reduction of fees by Ingram—the wonderful thing is that anyone can use an embed code (found here) to place this virtual bookstore on any web page and become a bookseller for this cause. Authors can use their websites as a point of sale and invite a whole community of friends and readers to buy a book of their choice as contribution to Houston’s recovery.
Another example of Aerio in action is Books for Science, which offers the collections Poets for Science and Science Books for Kids, as well as a supporter reading list and a list of books by authors affiliated with the nonprofit March for Science program. Any author collective, such as those we’ve written about lately at The Hot Sheet, could curate its own book collections and create similar stores. Such stores could then be embedded on any website.
Bottom line: While Ingram has been working primarily with publishers on the Aerio technology so far, we’ve always been interested in its premise for authors: crowd-selling, basically. The technology allows authors to deputize each of their buyers and fans and readers as their next bookseller. It’s good to have these two examples of how the technology looks in action. You can get started with Aerio here to see if it might be of use in your marketing. Check the pricing here; plans start at $25 monthly (or $250/year) for up to 20 titles.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
