The Javits Center hosted the 114th International Toy Fair over Presidents’ Day weekend, with 1100 exhibitors and an estimated 30,000 attendees. In 2016 U.S. toy sales grew 5% and are estimated to be $26 billion for the year, so the mood was upbeat. Numerous mainstream publishers were on hand, including HarperCollins, Macmillan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,…Continue Reading
Superhero movies – and to an extent TV shows – are one of the biggest trends in entertainment of recent years. But success on the screen doesn’t guarantee comic book sales. To better analyze the correlation, I took a look at the trade paperback sales of two comic books for two of the most popular…Continue Reading
Licensing deals have always been popular with publishers. As Publishing Technology COO Randy Petway astutely pointed out in his recent Publishing Perspectives article, “When sales are not something that can be planned for or predicted, publishers rely heavily on brand awareness through licensing deals, both to sell books and open new markets for intellectual property.” …Continue Reading
PEOPLE A relatively quiet month, personnel-wise: Peter Bernstein has taken a new position as Editor-in-Chief of the University Alliance for Life-Long Learning, an online venture of Oxford, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale Universities to develop distance learning courses. He had been working on an author website, AuthorByAuthor. . . . VP and Managing Director Scott Lubeck…Continue Reading
Nouveaux Romans Gavalda Awes France, Spielberg Grabs Levy, and Sijie Pays Dues to Balzac While most of the English-speaking world tried to figure out what to do with its heaping Star Wars inventory this month, the international lists — particularly the French — were galvanized by first-time authors who’ve put critics in a tizzy and…Continue Reading
