ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (8/8/00) As publishers clucked over General Electric CEO Jack Welch‘s vertigo-inducing $7.1 million advance — right on the heels of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin‘s $3.3 million one– it was only too obvious that business books have become, well, big business. In fact, business book sales in the professional category rocketed…Continue Reading
Is Borders’ “go-slow” approach to the online marketplace really a stroke of brilliance after all, as the Wall Street Journal recently postulated? The argument goes like this: despite the company’s listless approach to the Internet, which drove investors so bonkers that Borders rolled out the auction block earlier this year in search of a buyout…Continue Reading
Random House Parent Wages Global E-Commerce Turf War There is a special place on Thomas Middelhoff’s atlas of corporate geography that he likes to call “Bertelsmann Valley.” You might think of it as Silicon Valley stretched to a global scale and populated with scenic villages of dot-com shops, a few stray Holstein cows, and a…Continue Reading
As part of a continuing effort to chart the ripples of the industry’s sea change, PT has conducted an informal survey of more than 150 new-media companies that are staking claim to traditional publishing territory. We’ll have more to report from our research in the coming months, but first, here’s a brief snapshot of the…Continue Reading
This year’s 98 indefatigable Radcliffe Publishing Course graduates have done it again — succeeded in putting the rest of us to shame, that is. As in years past, we give you just a taste of publishing’s hyperachieving next generation in the composite biographical sketch below. All achievements have been taken from actual student biographies. Book,…Continue Reading
As live satellite feeds beamed Scholastic’s midnight Muggle-fest around the globe last month, the intricately choreographed release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was evidence of more than just the good fortune of Potter point-man Michael Jacobs. It was also proof that the one-day laydown — a luxury formerly reserved for embargoed bombshells…Continue Reading
Crime and Punishment King Bites the Bullet, Crime Pays in New Zealand, and Carvalho’s on the Case in Spain In a somewhat bizarre development, Stephen King’s hotly downloaded e-novella Riding the Bullet has shot around the globe — in a bricks-and-mortar edition. Though hard-copy versions of the work were originally ruled out by the K-man,…Continue Reading
