Amandeep Kochar, president and group CEO at Baker & Taylor, in conversation with Publishing Perspectives
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute: Kristin Fassler
Amandeep Kochar: ‘We Have Our Initiatives’
One of the repeating elements of the 2025 New York University Advanced Publishing Institute for book business professionals in January is a “Leadership Power Hour” in which the Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts at New York University’s School of Professional Studies‘ will present a member of the industry who brings a specific viewpoint and background to her or his work in publishing.
On January 8, a day themed on “innovation and disruption” in the NYU program, the featured “Leadership Power Hour” speaker, Baker & Taylor’s president and group CEO Amandeep Kochar, may just pull out a kids’ book and show you exactly what his phrase “accidental entrepreneurship” means.
Not only did he start Paw Prints Publishing in 2022 as a company of Baker & Taylor—the States’ largest supplier of content, software, and services to public and academic libraries—but Kochar also wrote the first title in the Paw Prints imprint catalogue, himself: Jeet and Fudge: The Dueling Lemonade Stands features a Sikh boy, his dog, and the world through their eyes.
“It started out as a passion project and became a business,” Kochar says, “and a profitable business. We have more than 80 titles now,” with a goal of 30 to 50 titles yearly. “Most are in both English and Spanish,” he says, and in other languages specific to the characters in many cases.
The goal here of the Paw Prints imprint, Kochar says, is to give children a sense of place, belonging, and selfhood—”whether you’re an East Asian girl growing up in the United States in a wheelchair wanting to be a dancer, or a young Sikh boy who’s adopted and struggling to find identity.” Kochar and many other Paw Prints authors donate their books’ sales’ proceeds to service organizations. His beneficiary is the nonprofit Sikh Coalition, which provides legal representation and more “to protect the constitutional right to practice your faith without fear.”
“I almost feel like I’m pitching to a distributor right now,” Kochar tells his interviewer with a laugh. “But all this is to say that while we’re a large global company, we have our initiatives that we always start and make grow through the years.”
And that’s “accidental entrepreneurship.” You see a need. You look at your resources. And you use them to respond to that need.
Kochar understands this as a character trait of the company he leads. While the NYU program is filled with voices from the publishing industry, Kochar’s will be easily among the most distinctive, his quiet baritone enunciating his comments with great care and precision. This is just the type of range and diversity Kochar both appreciates and wants to support. And he’s on the speakers’ roster exactly because his isn’t the concept of a major publishing-industry company many might expect to find on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
The Program’s Range and Reach
Designed for mid- to senior-level book-publishing professionals, the NYU program will take place as a physical event at New York University’s Kimmel Center on Washington Square South. Information about the 2025 program and registration is available here and through email at nyu.api@nyu.edu. The US$5,000 fee includes breakfasts, lunches, and opening and closing receptions.
In small sessions, workshops, presentations, and keynotes, the attendees will meet a range of personalities, from some of the most compact and targeted ventures to some of the biggest and most eye-opening, like Kochar’s Baker & Taylor.
“We like to do things that we believe are right for the reading community, for the world. The goal is very simple. To get more readers reading more. That’s it.”Amandeep Kochar, Baker & Taylor
“You know,” he says, “we work with more than 5,000 content publishers around the world. We have offices and people on four continents. We have our world service center and hundreds of people in Australia. We have more than 140 people in India. We have our Glasgow office. Then, you know, we’re here in the United States of America, as well. Truly a global company. You’re seeing all parts of the world in us.”
With clients among academic libraries, collegiate libraries, and K-12 school libraries, he says, “We service them with physical materials, physical books, physical AV material, if you will. We still sell DVDs, digital content, so e-books, digital audiobooks, e-newspapers, e-magazines. And we also provide software to make the institutions more efficient in their book selections, then collection management and book purchasing as well.”
That panoply of services goes on with an underlying concept of each element having been added when a need was spotted: the entrepreneurial spirit is keeping this old company young, as Kochar describes it.
“I remember that quote from one of the former presidents of India,” he says, reciting by memory from the writings of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. “I’m going to read this out to you: ‘Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. And when there is order in nations, there is peace all over the world.’
“We like to do things” at Baker & Taylor “that we believe are right for the reading community, for the world,” he says. “The goal is very simple. To get more readers reading more. That’s it.
Amandeep Kochar takes a beat and smiles: “I like to introduce ourselves as a 197-year-old start-up.”
Andrea Chambers on the Institute
Familiar to many in the United States’ and international publishing industry, Andrea Chambers is the associate dean at New York University’s Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts. Working with senior program advisor Georgina Levitt, Chambers points up the continually updating range of emphases in the program, as a new class of professionals prepares for this second year with an updated set of industry tissues and concerns.
Andrea Chambers
“What a difference a year brings,” Chambers says. “We’ve been monitoring emerging and evolving topics and there are so many we plan to explore in 2025.
“With a core focus on leadership and management strategies at the Advanced Publishing Institute 2024 [API], we examined how businesses were approaching the threats and opportunities of AI and discussed DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] as a moral imperative.
“Now in 2025, we we’ll share multiple examples of how AI can help you in every facet of your business, and how DEI is not only a moral but a business necessity, opening new markets and opportunities. Marketing retail strategies and analytics also have shifted dramatically since last year, and we’ve lined up the best experts in the field to share case studies and inside advice.”
In the inaugural edition of the program at NYU last year, Chambers says, “From the moment we announced that API was coming to NYU as a reimagining of the Yale Publishing Course, we sensed a hunger for an in-depth program—a course, not a conference—that would encourage like-minded publishing peers to listen, learn, and most importantly, share their viewpoints in a closed-door space.”
In addition to hearing from key leadership figures in the industry, Chambers says, the team found that “Our attendees also wanted more from the top leaders in our industry—they wanted the opportunity to ask them direct questions individually or in small groups, even share a coffee with them. They also want to workshop with their fellow publishers,” she says, “as well as academic experts, focus on case studies and real-world analytics, network, and head back to their places of work with new perspectives and tangible tools and strategies to share.
“So, we’re adding more workshops, more interactive activities, and more ways to network and converse.”
The international character of the program is growing, too, Chambers points out, in one instance in a discussion among “leaders of international book fairs, specifically Frankfurt, Bologna, London, and Sharjah.” That one features Frankfurter Buchmesse‘s Juergen Boos; Sharjah Book Authority‘s Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri’; Bologna Children’s Book Fair ‘s Elena Pasoli; and Bologna Book Plus‘ Jacks Thomas; with Publishers Weekly‘s Ed Nawatka moderating.
“We’ve also added sessions on global leadership,” Chambers says, including David Shelley, the CEO of Hachette UK and Hachette Book Group in the United States. Shelley, of course, opened the Publishing Perspectives Forum with a keynote interview at Frankfurter Buchmesse in October. Another speaker heard in the forum at Frankfurt is Lee Jarit, the global head of publisher and partner relations for Audible. Publishing Perspectives will be in conversation with Jarit in the week’s second “Leadership Power Hour,” at 9:15 a.m. on January 7.
Chambers also points to speakers who are specialists in translation rights, literary agenting on an international scale, and a panel on global trends, challenges, and opportunities moderated by Gilbert Cruz, book review editor of The New York Times.
A look at the complete agenda is here, and a list of speakers (from author-illustrator Jeff Kinney of the “Wimpy Kid” series to James Daunt, chief of both Waterstones in the United Kingdom and Barnes & Noble in the States) is here.
“We’re very excited,” Chambers says.
More on events in New York University’s programming relative to book publishing is here, more on registration is available here, more on publishing education is here, and more on the United States’ publishing market is here.
See also:
NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute: Kristin Fassler
NYU Advanced Publishing Institute Previews Its 2025 Program
The NYU Advanced Publishing Institute Opens 2025 Registration
Universal’s Sophie Kaplan: ‘A Symbiosis’ With Publishers
UTA Agent Mary Pender: ‘Focus on the Original Story’
David Steinberger’s Narrative: US National Book Awards
NYU’s New Advanced Publishing Institute: 2024 Speakers
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