Category Archives: Featured Articles

This Book Is Brought To You By…

With ads appearing on everything from cup holders to subway risers to (ok, to use an extreme case) people’s skin, books remain one of the last of the ad-free sacred spaces. Other than the occasional unsuccessful attempt at inserts (1970’s cigarette ads) and product placement (Bulgari anyone?), publishing has never looked seriously at advertising as…Continue Reading

International Bestsellers: Murders & Miracles

Tannöd, Germany’s current number one fiction title, overcame two obstacles to win the prestigious 2007 Krimipreis for the best crime novel: the protagonist is not an investigator or super sleuth as is typical in crime fiction, and it is Andrea Maria Schenkel’s debut. She based the genre-bending novel on actual unsolved murders that took place…Continue Reading

BEA Does Social Networking

During the last week of April, everyone registered for BEA received an email with a log-in code and password for MyBEA – the BEA social networking site created by EventMingle. Following the links and setting up an account is easy (especially for the MySpace crowd), but whether people will actually use the site to its…Continue Reading

Hey Old Media, What Are You Doing?

South by Southwest Interactive. Austin, Texas. For over ten years now the creators and users of technology’s cutting edge have gathered in the town of great Tex-Mex and live music to, well, interact, after a fashion. This is truly the realm of the ADD generation. Everywhere you looked at the convention center, at the panels,…Continue Reading

What I Learned On The Other Side

You could call them secret shoppers. Like the plainclothes informants who check out department stores for a lapse in customer service, publishers who slip on authors’ shoes return from their writing experience armed with anecdotes and tips that market research can’t devine. What many intelligencers see shocks them. Even thirty-year publishing veterans see their industry…Continue Reading

Industry Ink Slingers

When we checked in with publishing “ink slingers” just over two years ago, Sara Nelson’s move to Publishers Weekly was imminent, and Jerome Kramer was in mid-launch of VNU’s The Bookstandard. Today, most of the industry stalwarts are still chugging along (including yours truly), many with expanded offerings. We’ve extended our profiles to include blogs…Continue Reading

Edu Update: CAMEX & The Education Industry Investment Forum 2007

At the 9th Annual Education Industry Investment Forum (March 26-28), more than a hundred investors and entrepreneurs gathered to learn more about the current state of the $300B education market. As always, technology was the glue that binds. Sparknotes’ Dan Weiss joined HM’s Craig Bauer and Beth Aguiar, VP of Apollo’s University of Phoenix, to…Continue Reading

Prestige Fatigue: Book Awards- Marginal? Must-Have? Discuss.

In a prestige driven industry like publishing, scooping up a book award is often considered critical to sales success. But just as the book market has become increasingly fragmented over the past ten years, so has the awards market. Competition not only among books, but among the prizes themselves, is heating up – for every…Continue Reading

ONIX, Ebooks & Butterflies

Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, the passage to the digital realm can be a vulnerable and tremulous thing. Nowhere is this more evident than in the quantum mechanical realm of trade ebooks. The problem du jour: can ONIX, the electronic standard used for the last five years to send bibliographic data (title, author,…Continue Reading

Museum Copyright Seminar

The increasing complexity of copyright law and the tortured definition (and abuse) of “fair use” provoked the Metropolitan Museum of Art to host its second workshop on the subject at the College Art Association’s annual NY conference in February. Co-sponsored by the CAA, it was followed by a highly instructive (albeit complex) panel on fair…Continue Reading