At the annual Association of American Publishers meeting in New York on February 28, the topic was “Innovative Solutions for Historic Challenges,” and those ranged from education to the current congressional impasse, to copyright. Education critic and NYU professor Diane Ravitch was on hand to address the first, Senator Olympia Snowe discussed the second, and…Continue Reading
In the fiftieth year since its founding, the 26th biannual Jerusalem International Book Fair (JIBF) hosted 5 days of exhibits, panels, and literary events from February 10-February 15, 2013. More than 400 publishers from 30 countries exhibited, and the visitor head-count for the week exceeded 45,000. Amid jubilee celebration, though, a growing contingent of long-time participants…Continue Reading
Experienced booksellers will tell you Winter Institute 8 was great but possibly not as great as some of the earlier ones; but those who came for the first time raved about it. There’s been lots of coverage of the breakfast presentations by Daniel Pink and Malcolm Gladwell, both of whom delivered mesmerizing talks that were smart,…Continue Reading
The College Art Association’s 101st Annual Conference (held this year in New York, from February 13-16 at the New York Hilton) is primarily a spot for grad students seeking for jobs in the academic art world; professional symposia; and panels on such popular topics as “Eschatology in Art Historiography.” Tucked amongst all this heavy-hitting scholarship,…Continue Reading
While the name certainly implies a technological slant, the Digital Kids Conference at the 2013 Toy Fair on Tuesday and Wednesday was not all app-talk and virtual worlds. In fact, a theme emerged as quite the opposite: many new products in the toy market are combining digital with some physical product. Just as Skylanders was…Continue Reading
The topic at a recent American Book Producer Association (ABPA)’s brown bag lunch panel – open to nonmembers for $20 – was art books, and three publishers spoke to the assembled group of packagers about what is working, where it’s selling, and what projects they‘re looking for. Thames & Hudson’s President/Publisher Will Balliett, National Geographic’s…Continue Reading
The 44th Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF), scheduled to run January 23-February 5, 2013, is the second held since the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, but the first since the election of President Mohamed Morsi and his cabinet. More specifically, the Fair’s coincidence with the January 25th anniversary of the Revolution inevitably ties it to questions about…Continue Reading
The Digital Book World 2013 panels, “Sales Across Borders: Export” and “Sales Across Borders: Import” (back to back on Wednesday afternoon) were both concerned with the question of what new digital systems best allow books to travel across international boundaries—though their approaches were hardly two sides of one coin. On the Export panel, there was…Continue Reading
While authors have always been – and will continue to be — the driving force behind popular children’s characters, more publishers than ever are now also looking in-house for the ideas that will eventually become the next Fancy Nancy or Hunger Games. Original, publisher-generated intellectual property (IP) is nothing new—Alloy has long perfected this model with…Continue Reading
