artnership sees Booktopia further its investment in publishing, following the integration of Brio Books earlier this year and the creation of its own publishing imprint Booktopia Editions in 2019. WPG will also form a local ANZ publishing program which will publish 50 titles a year across fiction, narrative non-fiction, children’s books, and a small range of illustrated and gift titles. “It is an honour and a privilege to be able to invest in their publishing program moving forward. The Welbeck Publishing Group is on a fast track to becoming a major player in the global independent publishing world,” said Booktopia founder and chief executive Tony Nash.  “As a shareholder in Welbeck ANZ we will be able to champion their international and local titles into the Australian market. They have 4500 titles on their list already and it continues to grow.” Nash said the move will have positive outcomes for readers and authors. “Because we’re a retailer, distributor and publisher, we can capitalise on now getting direct full access to [WPG’s] list of books,” he told Inside Retail.  “We get to control how the books are promoted, how much stock we want to hold. The stock is with us, it doesn’t have to come from another distribution centre before it comes to ours and then [goes] to the customer. We are now starting to collapse the ecosystem into one big facility where we are doing the retailing and the distribution.” With stock in-house and ready to go, Booktopia can then improve on speed to market.  “The speed to get product to the consumer through the Booktopia website is quicker. And we’ve got a very automated supply chain and logistics distribution centre where we can get the product to the bookshops very fast as well,” Nash said.  Booktopia will invest approximately $3 million in the business which will be used to fund stock, including the acquisition of new titles with bigger authors, and working capital, Nash explained. Growth plans The deal is expected to be finalised by September 30 with Welbeck ANZ set to be up and running by January 2022. WPG founder and director Mark Smith will relocate to Australia yearly next year to assist with establishing the business, while executive director Marcus Leaver will also base himself in Sydney for periods of time each year. Nash is confident that it will be a successful partnership for both parties.  “It’s a business that was already turning over a significant amount of money in Australia,” Nash said, citing WPG’s distribution deal with Australian publishers Allen & Unwin.  “Rather than being a UK company and having an agency in Australia representing them, they’re now setting up an office in Australia, which we are investing in, so we’re the beneficiaries of all the global activities.” Smith and Leaver have a longstanding relationship with Booktopia and have long harbored ambitions to establish Welback operations in Australia and New Zealand. “Within a short period of time, we plan to be a significant independent publisher in the ANZ market with a fresh, innovative, and entrepreneurial approach that connects as many authors with readers as possible all around the world,” Leaver said in a statement.  Nash also believes this could be a very interesting model for other publishers who are looking for capital.  “Booktopia is excited about exploring this, about investing in the Australian operations of international publishing companies, it could be a model that can be rolled out quite significantly,” he said.  Fondness for physical books Booktopia has benefited from the boom in online shopping over the last 12-18 months, doubling its earnings in the third quarter, and Nash is hopeful that consumers will continue to turn to online services for speed and convenience.  Booktopia has also noticed that while e-books and audiobooks are on the rise, most people are longing for an escape from technology to get lost in a book.  “It might take eight seconds to download an audiobook, but what’s happening is people are actually opting to order the physical version and have it delivered to them because they are spending so much time at home on their phone or on their computer, the last thing they want to do is then read the book on another device.”