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
70,000-Odd Small Publishers Might Be Wagging Your Dog They’re out there — all 73,000 of them — scrabbling for your shelf-space, mucking up your mindshare. That’s the number of book publishers in the US, according to Bowker’s Books in Print database, and it has nearly doubled in the past decade. Blame the go-go ’90s, the…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
Sales of Book Businesses Plummet, But the Big Keep Getting Bigger In the third quarter of this year, merger and acquisition activity in trade book and other consumer publishing segments plummeted more than 40%, according to industry figures tracked by investment banking firm Whitestone Communications. Despite a flurry of speculation over sales — for example,…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Phyllis Grann’s imminent departure from Penguin Putnam took almost everyone aback, and unnerved more than a few long-time Putnam folks. In other PP news, Sean Moore has left DK US, where he was VP Publisher of the Adult division. He may be reached at 914 591-3220. David Ford came to New York over the…Continue Reading
PEOPLE There’s been major movement in publishing these last few weeks of summer, which PT will recap for those who have been literally or figuratively out of it: Kara Welsh has been named VP, Publisher of New American Library, reporting to Leslie Gelbman. She was VP, Deputy Publisher at Pocket Books. And Therese Burke, formerly…Continue Reading
PEOPLE Candy Lee, formerly CEO of Troll Communications, has joined iFormation Group as the MD of Sales & Marketing. Launched in June 2000, iFormation is a partnership of The Boston Consulting Group, General Atlantic Partners, and Goldman Sachs that partners with “the world’s leading companies by investing in and operating new technology businesses that leverage…Continue Reading
Are Bulked-Up Book Distributors The Industry’s Next Goliaths? Time was, you would call a guy like Gilbert Perlman a book distributor. The warehouse, the sales staff, the publishing clients, even the name on the door — Client Distribution Services — all fit the modus operandi of firms schlepping books from the presses to the masses….Continue Reading
