Last year, Bookreporter.com‘s Carol Fitzgerald had the novel insight that if there isn’t an audience for a book, perhaps it shouldn’t be published. The publishing palooza has subsided a bit (Bowker recently reported that total titles were down to 172,000 last year – an 18,000 title drop from 2004), and Chris Anderson mania has everyone…Continue Reading
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Tagged Apple, Audible, BOMC, Bookreporter.com, Bookspan, Bowker, Carol Fitzgerald, Charles Arda, Chris Anderson, Clear Cut Press, Contact Editions, Don Katz, Dorchester, Hard Case Crime, Harlequin, Hours Press, iPod, Kelsey Street Press, Les Figues, Max Phillips, McSweeney's, McSweeney's Book Release Club, Michael Cader, Michelle Berger, Nirvana, Partners West, Penguin, Public Affairs, Publishers Marketplace, Random House, Richard Jensen, Soft Skull Press, Soundgarden, SPD Books, Stephen King, Sub Pop Records, Susan Weinberg, The Clear Cut Future, The Colorado Kid, Ugly Duckling Press, Up Records, Wave Books, Zooba
Has Online Syndication Killed the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg? Back in the day, syndication not only sold papers, but was a booming business that built up audiences for everything from columnists’ and comic strip-pers’ books (with excerpts) to television audiences (with Gemstar numbers and listings). And, of course, the syndicated columns and strips…Continue Reading
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Tagged Andrews McMeel, Bill O'Reilly, BN.com, CafePress.com, Cathy Guisewite, Chris Pizey, Creators Syndicate, Creators.com, Dan Calbrese, David Hendin, Doubleday, Esther Margolis, Gemstar, Go Comics, Hundreds of Heads Books, John McMeel, Jon Rosenberg, Judith Martin, King Features, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services, Lisa Wilson, Mark Bernstein, Michael Cader, Michael Cooke, Miss Manners, Molly Ivins, New York Times Syndicate, Newmarket Press, Nielsen, North Star Writers Group, Publishers Lunch, Randy Cohen, Scott Adams, The Ethicist, uclick, United Media/United Feature Syndicate, Universal Press Syndicate, WW Norton, Yahoo! News
Book Clubs Reinvent the Digital World If the term ‘book club’ evokes a muddled mélange (if not somewhat terrifying dream) of Oprah covering Tolstoy in gold stickers, growing legions of like-minded enthusiasts discussing scrapbooks or maybe even booksellers in Kabul, classes filled with Scholastic catalogs offering Shrek 2 tie-ins, while exclamation-point-laden mailers emblazoned with “6…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon Prime, AOL Time Warner, Audible, Audio Book Club, Audio Queue, Baker & Taylor, Bertelsmann, Book-of-the-Month Club, Booksfree, Bookspan, Doubleday, Doug Ross, Ingram, Literary Guild, Markus Wilhelm, Media Bay, Michael Cader, MSN Music service, Publishers Marketplace, Recorded Books, Ruth Stevens, S&S Audio, Scholastic, Simply Audiobooks, Time Life, VNU's Bookscan, Wurld Media's "Peer Impact", ZDag, Zooba
Shortly before the news broke that Sara Nelson would be taking the helm at Publishers Weekly, Jerome Kramer, Editor-In-Chief and Managing Director of VNU’s US Literary Group, says he got a call from her explaining that, due to a conflict of interest, she wouldn’t be able to write that regular column they had planned for…Continue Reading
PT’s Savvy Commentators Ponder the Fallout from Another Year in Publishing As we surveyed the smoking turf from another twelve months in the book business, it struck us that this year’s pinnacles and pratfalls were decidedly in the eye of the beholder. We asked a number of savvy publishing personalities to offer their take on…Continue Reading
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Tagged AMS, Andrews McMeel, AOL, Avalon Publishing Group, Bertelsmann, BookScan, Borders, Brown, Charlie Winton, Frank Pearl, Glamour, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin, Idea Logical Company, Jack McKeown, Jack Shoemaker, Joe Spieler, Journals, Karen Jenkins Holt, Kurt Cobain, Little, Michael Cader, Michael Crichton, Michael Wolff, Mike Bryan, Mike Shatzkin, New York Observer, Pantheon, Pat Strachan, Perseus Books Group, PGW, Prey, Publishers Lunch, Random House, Reader's Digest, Reiman Publications, Riverhead, Running Press, Sara Nelson, Scholastic, Shoemaker & Hoard, Simon & Schuster, Stephen King, The Spieler Agency, View From A Buick 8, Vivendi
Two New Surveys Suggest That Book Price-Elasticity Is Getting All Stretched Out Among the persnickety trends of 2002 was continued brow-furrowing from industry observers and surveyors about the perception that book prices are disastrously high (see article). Some have cited the ruinous effect of “increasingly ubiquitous remainders” on the one hand, and stunningly deep discounts…Continue Reading
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Tagged Amazon.com, Authors Guild, Barnes & Noble, BN.com, Book Reporter, Bowker, Carol Fitzgerald, Christopher Dreher, Jeff Bezos, Len Riggio, Michael Cader, Mike Shatzkin, New York Is Book Country, Open eBook Forum, Robert Sahr, Tablet PC
Amid Booming Book Biz Coverage, Critics See ‘Gaping’ News Holes First there was Keith Kelly at the New York Post. Then there were the hot-shots at Inside.com, and thus dawned a new era of frenzied jockeying among daily media scribes to fling arrows into the side of the homely book publishing business. While stalwarts such…Continue Reading
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Tagged A Reader's Manifesto, Adrian Zackheim, Amazon.com, AOL Time Warner, B.R. Myers, Bertelsmann, Bill Goldstein, Bitch in the House, Books & Books, Catherine Arnst, Condé Nast, Daily News, Dave Eggers, David Carr, David Kirkpatrick, Dennis Loy Johnson, Dinitia Smith, Elizabeth Manus, Felicity Barringer, George Gibson, Hardy Green, Homestore.com, Inside, Inside.com, Jeffrey Trachtenberg, Judith Regan, Keith Kelly, Kurt Andersen, Kurt Cobain, Langewiesche, Len Riggio, Linton Weeks, Lorne Manly, Maria Russo, Matthew Rose, Melville House, Michael Cader, Mirta Ojito, MobyLives.com, Nancy deWolf Smith, New York Post, New York Times, Paul Colford, Peter Kaplan, Poetry After 9/11, Portfolio, Publishers Lunch, Publishers Weekly, PW Newsline, Random House, Rebecca Traister, Richard Bernstein, Ruth Lilly, Salon, Salon.com, Sara Nelson, Snowball's Chance, Stephen Kinzer, Steven Erlanger, The New York Observer, The New York Times Book Review, Valerie Merians, Walker & Co., Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, William Morrow
Amid Post-Book-Fair Grumbling, London Gains on the Buchmesse “Deplorable, but not lethal” was the official word on southbound exhibitor numbers at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair — they tumbled 4%, a figure direly reported to the trade as “the biggest decline in the fair’s 54-year history” — and it made for a condign summation of…Continue Reading
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Tagged A. E. Hotchner, Alistair Burtenshaw, Bill Anderson, Bologna Children's Book Fair, BookExpo America, CBA Expo, Christian Booksellers Association, Courtney Muller, Frankfurt Book Fair, Gothenburg, HarperCollins, Internet World, Jung Chang, Lindhardt og Ringhof, Locus, London Book Fair, Maureen Golden, Merete Borre, Michael Cader, Michael Meller, Mike Shatzkin, Nan A. Talese, Nan Talese, New York Is Book Country, Orange Avenue, Ornella Robbiati, Paul Newman, Penton Media, Reed Exhibitions, Rex Howe, Sonzogno, St. Martin's Press, Susan Katz, Tim Bent, Toby Eady, Volker Neumann, Wei Hui, Xinran
