Vickie Stringer: The Queen of Hip-Hop Lit
• What are your biggest challenges as a publisher?
Stringer: Distribution. … Distribution is driving me nuts. I hate it. I don’t want to do it anymore. … I use to have a company that did my fulfillment, and they were charging me $8,000 to $9,000 a month. So I said, “Oh no, I could do that.” I go out and get a 5,000-square-foot warehouse [and] decorate it. It is gorgeous, and I hate it. The warehouse is loud and noisy. I have attendance issues, I have accountability issues, I have shipping issues, return and invoice issues. Issues, issues, issues. My life is this dag-gone warehouse. I’m up there Friday nights, Saturdays, Sundays, packing boxes, shipping boxes, looking for tape, a box cutter. …
We need to be exclusively distributed by someone else. We have the demand, and then I can focus on the sales and marketing and publicity and production. I don’t need to be worrying about how to get the books in the stores. So I hate this part of my life. … Charge me a fee and get my books everywhere. …
• You recently overhauled the Triple Crown Web site (TripleCrownPublications.com) and added new features. How does the Web site help to promote Triple Crown?
Stringer: We [now] have Triple Crown TV [on the Web site] with our own reality show [featuring the staff]. ... I have my blog. … We try to be innovative. That’s what [our customers] are looking for from us. With the Internet being such a prominent place … that should really be our focus instead of shipping the books.
• Over the summer, Triple Crown was given its own bookshelf in Borders and Waldenbooks. Do you feel you were taking a risk by displaying your books by the publisher, rather than by the author, in these stores?
Stringer: I didn’t because I believe in all of my books equally. I’ve never loved one book over the other, so I was embracing the genre more than [Triple Crown author] Tu-Shonda Whitaker [for example]. I love the genre. I love that I do it that way because now the staff and the authors have something they can be a part of, that they’re proud of. So when you say Triple Crown, my shipping clerk can smile, my author can smile, my receptionist can smile. But when you’re a publishing house and [it’s all about the individual] authors, how divided is the team? ... When you say Triple Crown, it really is a collective effort. It is not just the author who’s written a great book, it’s the editor, the typesetter, it’s everyone. So I was never afraid of that. … We’re going to be united, and it’s going to be Triple Crown Publishing, and we’re going to have a lot of great books––not just a book by a great author. …
