There was a certain fin de siècle feeling at the Javits Center during the week of Feb. 11 — it was the 99th annual Toy Fair, after all — as the toy biz hit New York City in suitably world-weary grandeur. Press releases moped that the learning segment of the toy industry was down 6%…Continue Reading
As jitters over snail mail consume the media, email marketers have been keen to whisper what amounts to the new gospel in direct-to-consumer marketing: opting-in. Wary of their mailboxes, the theory goes, customers are much more likely to agree to receive promotional messages via email. Whether or not this is actually the case, sagging response…Continue Reading
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (8/15/01) Goodbye, pudding … hello, Jell-O. That’s what millions of children recited as the battle over packaging Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for the American market flared a few years back. In the stateside edition, gelatin prevailed, while “crooked” morphed into “wonky,” school “holidays” became “vacations,” and “bobbles” were no…Continue Reading
Every publishing career follows a narrative arc. For some, it’s the Proustian ebb of Swann’s Way. For others, it’s Finnegans Wake. And the most gripping career stories tend to be those that jump out of the genre altogether. As conversations with a dozen book-world veterans show, life after publishing does exist, and what’s more, there’s…Continue Reading
Vendor Survey 2001 As the old nursery rhyme has it: “Three wise men of Gotham / Went to sea in a bowl; / If the bowl had been stronger / My story had been longer.” The ever trenchant respondents to Publishing Trends’ annual survey on publisher services to wholesalers and retailers have cast publishers in…Continue Reading
