S&S, Scholastic Among Houses Pondering the Product Pipeline While a well-oiled supply chain has been an obsession among other industries over the last two decades, book publishers have only recently begun to put the product pipeline front and center on the radar screen as they try to banish “inventory obsolescence” — products washing up on…Continue Reading
Last month PT surveyed the bulging book-bags of client distribution players in the US, and a report to be released this month from the British Publishers Association indicates that a bundle of business from across the pond may well be coming their way. The US Book Market: A Survey and Route Map for UK Publishers,…Continue Reading
Random Redux, Freese Helms PGW: Client Distribution Biz Jostles and Grows Don Fehr, nearly a year into his tenure as Director of Smithsonian Books, needed a distribution fix. The august publishing concern (formerly Smithsonian Institution Press) was gunning for trade sales growth — aiming to reverse its mix of 80% academic and 20% trade-bound titles…Continue Reading
This year Publishing Trends abandoned its vendor survey, because trying to rate players in the fulfillment and distribution arena was like trying to judge a warehouse full of Rube Goldberg contraptions — there are too many moving pieces, and they all move in different (some might say mysterious) ways. But one thing is certain: they…Continue Reading
Can Textbook E-Tailers Topple Bookselling’s Ivory Tower? Like many Internet business ventures, online textbook retailing undoubtedly seemed like a good idea at the time. An obscenely plump $5 billion industry just begging to be undersold. More than 5 million full-time undergrads and 10 million other higher education students with annual discretionary spending power of a…Continue Reading
