Why Printed Books Still Drive Student Success (with Think Factory Podcast)

What Keeps You Up At Night

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Think Factory Podcast. We got one question for you. What keeps you up at night?

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome back to the Think Factory Podcast, powered by OGC Solutions. I'm your host today, Chris Santomassino, and delighted to be with Devin Pentazzi. Devin's the uh Chief Operating Officer for American Book Company in Woodstock, Georgia. So welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Oh, thank you, Chris. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

I was uh really intrigued by uh Devin and his business uh for a lot of reasons, but uh what we're here to talk about today is uh the magic of books. American Book Company, as you can gather from the name, is a book published book printer. And Devin's got a lot to say not only about the company, but what books do for kids and how important books are for education and to the teachers that make it all happen.

Building A Family Education Company

SPEAKER_00 0:53

So tell us a little bit about American Book Company for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Certainly, Chris. Uh we have been involved in education for the last 30 years selling uh print, K-12, test prep, and curriculum materials into primarily southeastern United States. We started with uh books in South Carolina and just saw a need. That was back at the age of the graduation tests. And uh so there were a lot of kids that were getting through school, weren't able to pass that test. Very state-specific, very niche, very niche audience, and uh a lot of kids uh that were just being left behind. And uh so we wrote books to help those kids so they could graduate, and that morphed into more things as uh more trends in the United States started changing. We could help kids all the way down to the third grade level as testing went down there with the ESCA initiatives and later on race to the top. And uh so all of these uh all of these programs and initiatives were all designed around raising student achievements. So uh the company was started. Uh, my parents uh were both educators, and I came on with them. I was just completing college, and uh, so we started working uh right away in the trenches. Uh so my mother, who is still uh here, uh the founder, Colleen Pintozi, she's still in the business, as well as my kids are in the business, so we're family business now, three generations working. You know, we're just focused on how do we help these kids the best way we can. And uh so we started getting into print, originally uh outsourcing the print, uh, and then we realized, hey, we can we can print this ourselves. And uh so we started with some little copiers and some uh recirculating document feeder machines. Uh, and uh from there we we graduated into uh other boxes uh that worked for our black and white and color, and then moved on uh to uh to bigger models, uh the role-fed uh model. So we're really happy. Uh, you know, it's been a growth, it's been a happy growth process as we are able to serve more customers and uh help more uh educators and students uh across the country with their needs, both whether it's in print, uh we also have a digital component that follows our our print.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

That's a great story. I love I love all the uh the really solid family business stories that you hear from the industry. Really, really impressive. Yes, especially when you're you're making cool products, of course.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Um yes, yeah. And it's great. You know, you never know, you know, if you're now if the next generation is going to be interested or not. But uh it's been great. I have uh three of my children now involved in the business and uh uh maybe three more on the way, we'll see. Uh terrific.

Print First For Higher Scores

SPEAKER_01 3:28

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So I'd love to hear it from you, but I think whenever you look at, you know, but you read in the news or the statistics that get published, the impression I have is that kids learn a lot better when they're looking at printed books and reading books and you know, maybe doing other things like marking them up and highlighting them and writing notes in the books as compared to what we saw, especially during the pandemic, where people were you know trying to learn on MacBooks and Chromebooks and uh tablets and all of that stuff. So maybe share a little bit about your experience in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Oh, certainly. You know, during the pandemic, you know, there were a lot of changes right away. Um, and uh fortunately for us, uh some of the some of the rough changes uh were very fast. There was a lot of uh interest in digital, a lot of uh places were going digital. Uh we were really focused more on the print then, didn't have as much digital, and we continue to serve our print customers. Over time, uh we had a consistent track record. One thing that separates our company from others is that we we guarantee uh student performance success on a classroom level that scores are going to go up using our materials if they didn't use our materials the previous year. So the guaranteed score improvement is a big deal. And we're able to offer that, and we found the best place we can offer that is with our print materials because print materials are just very good. Uh, that tactile stimulation of turning those pages, manipulating the product, writing in it, all of that helps with the memory, memorization, um, acquisition of skill in a way that doesn't happen on the screen. Uh so the screen has its uses, but the print uh really, really, really takes it to uh the best level. So we found we we prefer uh you know, we think print first and then digital. Uh other companies are digital then print, but we're print then digital. We really believe in the print. Uh we want students to engage with the print, and we think that's the best way for them to see the highest scores. Now, the easier way to measure it during the course of using our program is with the digital components because you know that data just comes over in real time all the way up to the district. They can see what's going on. But the print, if they're involved in the print, they're gonna see success. Uh, and it's something that we we stand behind, we see it every day. Um, our our educators come up to us at the education conferences around the country and tell us, hey, we used your products, our scores went up. I tell all my teachers they gotta buy ABC materials. So we've had good experience and a good engagement with the print.

Tactile Learning And Less Cheating

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah, talk about how that you know that idea of tactile sensation really translates into absorbing the material better. You know, because obviously we learn through our ears and our eyes um primarily, but you know what what about that uh the physicality of touching the the book and you know having that sensation? What does that do exactly?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Uh you know, that's a that's a really good question. I studied some of that in uh like cognitive psychology and uh those kinds of uh classes I took in college, but basically the idea is you know it's just one more senses. We have six senses and we can't uh activate the tactile as much uh with uh digital as we can with print. And it makes a difference. Uh we learn tactically uh and in a way that we don't uh just by listening or hearing um or or even keyboarding. Uh there's there's something else that happens in that process, just like you can tell people uh a hundred times how to drive, but you know, get them in front of the the car and it's a different experience because there are some tactile things associated with those skills. And some of that translates right into the books. Uh, I know that in uh Sweden, for instance, they did a study and saw that they looked at the literature, saw what happened during COVID, and they moved to making sure that their national funds were going more heavily towards a print experience. So they said, hey, we've got to go into print. And it's not only happening in in places like Sweden. Many states in the United States have come to the same conclusion and are requiring print in the classrooms, uh, particularly at the younger grades and middle school grades, they want to see more print in the classrooms on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

When you say the touching, of course, I think you know it's the ability to highlight, make notes. You know, personally, I'm no genius, but I I can sometimes picture where I read something within a book as opposed to what I saw on the screen. And you could say it was on the left-hand page and it was, you know, in this certain section. There's something about the book and the printed work that just sticks with you a little bit more. You know, sometimes you run your finger over it as you're reading it, whatever your method is, but it's just a little bit easier to pay attention and retain it, I think.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Absolutely. It is it is much easier to retain the knowledge if you're if you're manipulating it a number of different ways, including the highlighting, including writing, whatever, uh whatever works on the page, it's just a better experience. And it's also easier uh for uh, and it really helps right now because you know, in the age of AI, as uh most educators have seen, you know, um students are tempted, okay? And so things happen digitally that look really good, and then when they get in the classroom, those scores are very different on the tests. If they're taking the tests in real time in the classroom, and so uh that gets eliminated with the book. Uh books are uh, you know, cheetah can happen. If someone's really desperate, they'll find a way to do whatever. But it is much harder to do with having a print material, having a print material in the classroom where they're not having the digital uh tools at their disposal, and then making sure that they've really uh enmeshed themselves into the curriculum uh and really learned uh the skills that are required for that course.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Right. And I'm sure the educators that you support, the administrators that you speak to, they're echoing the sentiment and they're they're spending more money on books, I'm assuming too.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

They are. Uh they've always walked, even when they've talked at the highest levels on digital, they've always walked traditional. There's always been a big uh need of uh administrators at a at a basic level understand the importance of print. And uh while they were very big on going digital, uh, no one wanted to feel like they were being left behind on the new, whatever the new thing was, uh they realized that that print, and some of them, some of them went all the way to a complete digital, no print, and then they have come back as well and said, hey, wait a minute, we need to get more print in our classrooms.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

More traditional approach,

Why Consumable Books Win Now

SPEAKER_00 9:40

right? Yeah, you know, it's um it's interesting to see what's happened in the industry a little bit too. I mean, uh I think for the most part, gone are the days which you've where you've got the heavy, hard-covered books, and it's more about almost like a pamphlet style, you know, soft covered books that can be used once by a student and they can sort of personalize their experience.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

That's correct. You know, our books are uh consumable uh course books, so they can uh take them home. And and by the way, the consumable really has won the day as well. Even uh traditional textbook companies are moving to more of a consumable experience uh because knowledge is changing so fast, so so fast. Back of the days of I'm gonna have this textbook, I'm going to pass it on to the next one. You remember growing up and you had to write your name in, and you knew that textbook was going on for seven years because it was adopted for seven years and that content was not going to change. But we know today, particularly in the sciences, social studies, things change very, very fast. And uh if we don't uh keep ahead of that in our particular space, we have double the challenge because we have to cover not only when the standards change, but sometimes they will adopt a new testing format, or they will simply change to a different testing company. And so the style of questions, the nature of the questions asked will change. And so we have to go back into our materials and make sure that everything is current every time one of those two things happens. And so uh having a a consumable experience, a consumable course book is really what what um saves the day for this for the students and teachers out there. It's a heavy duty obligation for a book printer, wouldn't you say? Yes, it is. It is. It's a it's a very specialized place. Um it's a place we operate in um every day. We just have to learn how to do it better and better, more efficiently as standards or testing changes. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Well, I'm I'm sure that the the folks that you uh work with, your the teachers directly, the administrators, appreciate you know what what you're doing and the fact that you're making it available

Spotlight For Success Podcast Stories

SPEAKER_00 11:39

for students. But what uh one of the other things I found really interesting about you and and the company was the support that you give your clients, so to speak, that goes beyond printing good books. Uh tell us about the podcast that you put together.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Oh, sure. We also have a podcast that we produce called Spotlight for Success. Uh that's spotlight the number four success.com. And you can go there and see videos. We go to conferences, probably at least, I would say on average, one a month. And we visit, uh we spoke, we speak with educators just walking down the aisles and talk to them, ask them if they want to come on. We have these guests, special guests that come on, uh, not only from the educators themselves that are there, but also from other exhibitors. And we get their their feel of what's going on in the conference, what's going on in their classrooms, what's going on in their companies, and uh get a whole uh flavor for the event. And we give people a chance to talk about what's going on uh professionally in their communities and opportunities and moments where they've had success and the things that drive them, um, especially in their in their vocation of education.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

That's amazing because that you know the when when you look at some of your episodes, it's not sort of focused on book printing and and books, it's really just focused on that particular person and botlighting their achievements or maybe the things that they have to say about education. But yeah, that was great.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

So it's really it's really heartwarming uh listening to the stories and getting to speak with the people. Um my children are also involved. I have two of my children involved in in the podcasting elements as well, being hosts as well. So we're continuing this on and making sure we have something sustainable and something that that you know multiple generations can be involved in.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

It's all everything's a family affair at ABC, huh? It is, it is. That's

Bringing Students Into Print Careers

SPEAKER_00 13:29

great. Well, here's one last piece that I think really uh sums up what you guys are. You know, you're at your impact on education doesn't stop with books and it doesn't stop with your podcasts, but you're actually uh sort of ambassador for the printing industry as well, as I understand it, uh, where you're bringing in um you know students that are students at in in the um you know, stu or and future folks that are interested in the uh in the printing industry, you're bringing in students from Clemson and Arizona State to learn about the business. So love to hear a little bit about that as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Sure. We had uh a busload of of college students from Clemson that came by uh last year, and uh it was a great experience. You know, they came by, they are in an a specialized program that is really an applied graphic design program focused on the print. And uh so they wanted to come to a printing house to see what that's like. And that was also through our relationship with Canon. And uh, we have some great Canon products we use here on our on our floor, and uh so they came by to see everything, and it's wonderful for them to see everything in action, you know, from you know, graphic design to pre-press, getting it ready for the press, and then uh seeing the machines in operation uh was a great experience, very rewarding to see you know the next generation. And we have that here. We have uh a lot of young people, uh, graphic designers, um, and we have a team of writers both inside, and we have writers on the outside uh that are uh working together to collaborate, a great team, editors. So it works out really, really well. It's a it's a it's a small town environment, a lot of a lot of energy here and a lot of uh collaboration. That's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

And because you're really uh lighting a fire under these kids, right? That are uh you're giving them a chance to see what they're gonna experience when they graduate, why the industry is cool. What a great experience that must be.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Let me tell you, they're eager. Yeah, you know, Gen Z is eager. What one thing I've noticed with Gen Z is that they're just very eager to get involved. They're they're ready to uh join the workforce to get their hands dirty, um, whether that's remote or in an office setting. Um uh most of our work is done right here on site, and uh they're eager to get started. And uh they really enjoy just working well, collaborating with their their coworkers and and making friends. So it's really good.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Yeah, and I I think I think it does uh them a real service by giving them that exposure because typically, you know, you a little or not typically, but many kids get into a program that sounds really interesting, but they never get to experience it until after they graduate, and all of a sudden it's not what they thought it was. But here they're gonna they're gonna see the equipment, they're gonna see the process and and really appreciate it for what it is, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Yes, yes. It works really well, Chris. It's uh it's a rewarding uh experience, and we're we're happy we can be involved in it and welcome students anytime they'd want to come by to see what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

That's terrific. Well, this is just a great introduction to American Book Company, and I really appreciate you not only telling us about what you do, but how you do it and and the great impact that you have on the education uh industry. So thank you so much for sharing today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

I appreciate

How To Reach American Book Company

SPEAKER_01 16:28

it, Chris. Where can folks get in touch with you? Uh reach me via email dpintozi at abc12.com. Um and you can also find out more about our company at americanbookcompany.com. That's one long word spelled out. And uh we're here, right here in Woodstock, Georgia. So we'd love to hear from you. People can feel free to bring a busload of college students with them if they want to. There you go. Just give us a give us a little advanced warning. So we're ready to go and we've got people to receive them.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Excellent. That's great. Well, thanks a lot for joining the Think Factory Podcast, Devin. And this has been Devin Pintozi, the the Chief Operating Officer for American Book Company in Woodstock, Georgia. And I'm Chris Santamassimo, today's host of the Think Factory Podcast. We'll see you next time.