Everyone agrees that Amazon's dominance in book distribution is an unshakeable reality for independent publishers. But a new cooperative, born from quiet conversations starting in 2021, is actively proving that assumption wrong. What began as monthly check-ins between four publishing executives has blossomed into a legally incorporated venture with eight members and a plan to build an alternative shipping and printing network. This isn't about negotiating *with* Amazon, but about building a future *without* relying on it.
The Publishers Cooperative, which received its articles of incorporation in early 2025, represents a practical experiment in collective economics for an industry where independent houses often struggle alone against rising costs, tariff disruptions, and the logistical burden of small print runs. The cooperative's founding members AdventureKEEN, C&T Publishing, Gibbs-Smith, Mango Publishing, Mixed Media Resources, Mountaineers Books, Schiffer Publishing, and Ulysses Press span categories from regional interest titles to craft and lifestyle publishing. What they share is a scale problem: too small to command the discounts available to major houses, yet large enough to bear real costs when printing, shipping, or distribution expenses climb.
The Origin: From Monthly Calls to a Shared Legal Structure
Barrett-Daffin, speaking to Publishers Weekly, traced the organization's informal beginning: "The founding members Brad Farmer of Gibbs-Smith, Pete Schiffer of Schiffer Publishing, Tom Helleberg of Mountaineers Books, and Barrett-Daffin would try to meet monthly, and we were just sort of talking through what's working, what's not working."
The impetus was collegial more than transactional. Publishers at similar scales face overlapping challenges print vendor negotiations, paper costs, distribution logistics but industry associations typically serve either as loose networks or as advocacy bodies ill-suited to operational collaboration. What the founding group discovered through their monthly calls was that sharing operational details openly required a different kind of structure. As Barrett-Daffin noted, "Because we all signed an NDA, we can have a really free-flowing discussion. We're all part of a corporation."
The NDA framework matters. Industry associations typically cannot require members to share proprietary cost structures, vendor relationships, or pricing intelligence. The cooperative's corporate structure backed by binding agreements among members enables a depth of coordination that distinguishes it from networking groups. Members can compare actual vendor bids, share print cost-per-unit data, and coordinate release calendars without exposing sensitive information to non-members.
The Economics of Collective Buying
The cooperative's core proposition is straightforward: combine the buying power of eight independent publishers, each purchasing between $1 million and $10 million worth of printing annually, and the aggregate volume creates negotiating leverage that no single member could achieve alone. Barrett-Daffin explained the logic simply: "Instead of being eight companies that are buying between $1 million and $10 million worth of printing a year, you put all of us together, our buying power increases."
Keith Riegert, president of the Stable Book Group which includes Ulysses Press as a member of the cooperative offered a sharper contrast. Speaking to Publishers Weekly, he noted that his company also operates Perfect Bound, a platform that helps publishers source competitive bids for printing. "Perfect Bound is the individual capitalist approach to the free market," Riegert said, while "Publishers Cooperative is about collaboration to maximize economies of scale."
The distinction matters because it clarifies what the cooperative is not: it is not a volume broker that takes a cut of savings. It is a member-owned structure where the savings flow directly to members through reduced per-unit costs, improved shipping rates, and more predictable pricing cycles.
The First Initiative: Consolidated Overseas Printing
The cooperative's debut project addresses one of the most volatile cost centers in independent publishing: print procurement. The group is currently testing printers in India, a deliberate choice driven by geopolitical pressures more than purely cost considerations. As Barrett-Daffin noted, the group is looking outside China due to "the tariffs and the threat of more tariffs."
Once testing is complete, the plan calls for placing a consolidated order large enough to fill a single shipping container, which will be delivered to the Schiffer Press warehouse on the East Coast. Consolidating shipments across multiple members reduces per-unit freight costs and simplifies customs handling. The hope, cooperative members said, is to reduce costs through consolidated shipping and improved economies of scale.
Tom Helleberg, CEO of Mountaineers Books, quantified the potential upside in realistic terms: "Maybe we get a volume discounting of 5% on printing, maybe we get validated shipping rates. The idea is to create overall efficiencies the economic component is what divides the Cooperative from other organizations. It's holistic."
The 5% figure is illustrative more than guaranteed, but it reflects the kind of incremental improvement that, multiplied across eight members' combined print volumes, can meaningfully affect margins. For independent publishers operating on thin margins, even modest cost improvements in a major expense category can translate to sustainability.
Membership Requirements and Growth Trajectory
The cooperative is actively seeking seven additional mid-sized publishers to join its founding eight. However, membership is not open to any publisher at any scale. The organization requires members to meet certain scale requirements, designed to maintain the group's collective buying power and ensure that new members contribute meaningfully to joint initiatives.
The Stable Book Group, which includes additional publishers such as She Writes Press, Trafalgar Square Books, and VeloBooks, is under consideration for membership expansion. The cooperative is set to vote on extending membership to these remaining Stable Group members. This potential expansion would bring the cooperative closer to the scale needed for more aggressive vendor negotiations.
What makes this expansion significant for the broader independent publishing landscape is its implications for distribution and reach. As research on independent publishers' distribution strategies has noted, successful independent publishers typically exhibit strong editorial vision, effective marketing strategies, and robust community engagement. The cooperative model adds an operational dimension: by reducing overhead costs, members can redirect resources toward editorial quality and marketing more than absorbing operational inefficiencies.
The Cooperative Model in Context
The Publishers Cooperative is not the first attempt to formalize publisher collaboration, but its corporate structure and NDA-backed information sharing distinguish it from looser industry groupings. The cooperative model, broadly defined, empowers individuals by fostering self-reliance, collective ownership, and sustainable development. Unlike non-profits and charities, cooperatives create long-term solutions, encouraging participation, skill-building, and economic independence.
For independent publishers, the cooperative model addresses a specific structural vulnerability: the gap between the negotiating power of major houses and the operational constraints of small independents. A publisher releasing 20 to 50 titles annually lacks the volume to command the discounts that enable major publishers to price aggressively or maintain wider margins. Collective buying, when structured properly, narrows that gap without requiring publishers to cede editorial independence or merge operations.
The model also sidesteps a common failure mode in publisher collaboration: mission creep into generic industry advocacy. The cooperative's explicit focus on economics "to increase profitability, to raise all boats for the co-op," in Barrett-Daffin's words keeps the organization grounded in tangible operational outcomes more than abstract industry positioning.
What This Means for MyPostsNet Readers
For those working in community publishing, content sharing platforms, or independent media, the Publishers Cooperative offers a concrete case study in how operational collaboration can address economic pressures. The key mechanism is not charity or subsidy but collective buying: joining volume across multiple independent operations to command pricing that individual scale cannot achieve.
This matters for MyPostsNet readers because the same economic pressures squeezing independent publishers rising vendor costs, tariff disruptions, logistics complexity also affect digital-first publishing operations, newsletter-based media businesses, and community content platforms. The cooperative model's applicability extends beyond print. Groups of independent publishers, podcast networks, or newsletter collectives could adapt the same principles: formalize with binding agreements, share proprietary cost data under NDA, and coordinate purchasing or vendor negotiations as a unit more than as isolated players.
The Publishers Cooperative's experience also illustrates the importance of starting small and informal. The organization did not begin with a business plan or a pitch deck. It began with monthly calls among executives who trusted each other enough to compare notes honestly. The formal incorporation came later, once the collaborative dynamic had been validated in practice.
Looking Ahead: Printing First, Expansion Next
The cooperative's near-term roadmap centers on finalizing its overseas print arrangement. Testing with Indian vendors is underway, and the goal of a consolidated container shipment delivered to the Schiffer Press warehouse on the East Coast remains the priority initiative. Success or failure here will define the cooperative's credibility with prospective members and vendors alike.
If the printing initiative delivers meaningful savings, the cooperative can point to a concrete outcome when recruiting new members. If the logistics prove more complex than anticipated longer lead times, quality control challenges, customs delays the organization will need to demonstrate adaptability more than retreat from the collective model.
The vote on extending membership to Stable Book Group members represents another near-term test. A successful expansion would bring the cooperative closer to the scale needed for more ambitious vendor partnerships, potentially including paper procurement, distribution agreements, or marketing coordination. A stalled expansion would signal that the cooperative's value proposition, while clear to insiders, remains difficult to communicate to prospective members evaluating the trade-offs of binding collaboration.
What seems clear from the available record is that the Publishers Cooperative represents a deliberate bet: that independent publishers, by formalizing their collaboration, can achieve economic outcomes that isolated operations cannot. The monthly calls that began in 2021 have become a corporation. The corporation is now negotiating with overseas vendors and recruiting new members. Whether the model scales geographically, operationally, and philosophically remains to be seen. But the experiment is underway, documented in trade press coverage from Publishers Weekly and BookBrowse, with a first initiative that will either validate or complicate the cooperative premise.
Where to Read Further
The Publishers Weekly coverage of the cooperative's formation provides the most detailed account of the organization's structure, founding members, and initial initiatives. BookBrowse's coverage offers a concise summary oriented toward general readers. For broader context on the cooperative model and its applications beyond publishing, the Ensign Cooperative's explanation of cooperative principles provides a useful framework for understanding what distinguishes member-owned collaboration from other organizational forms.
Those interested in independent publishing strategy more broadly may also find value in case studies of successful independent publishers and their distribution approaches, which document how publishers like Graywolf Press and Akashic Books have built sustainable operations through distinctive editorial vision and community engagement complementary strategies to the cooperative model's operational focus.