Industry Ad Spending Holds Steady, But Media Choices See-Saw As reports of widespread layoffs ricochet along Madison Avenue, and billboards still bear Christmas greetings downtown, the prospect of an advertising biz downturn has highlighted the fact that book publishers’ advertising habits — in terms of fact-based, industry-wide data — remain among the great unknowns of…Continue Reading
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Tagged AdZone Interactive, Bantam Dell, Betsy Hulsebosch, Fred Ciporen, HarperCollins, Launchpad, Laurie Rippon, Michael Kazan, NYTimes.com, Ronni Stolzenberg, Salon.com, Spier, USAToday.com
It’s a two-way street for young writers in today’s book biz, contends Marian Wood, vp at Putnam and publisher of Marian Wood Books. Here’s an excerpt from her essay, “Is Publishing Dead?”, which appeared in the LA Times Book Review. It is easier today to publish a first novel than ever before. Armed with the…Continue Reading
Advance publicity for this year’s Toy Fair generated all the thrill of a wet blanket, with announcements rolling in from industry giants Mattel and Hasbro that their presence at the 98-year-old show will be significantly notched down in 2002. As talk of “downsizing” and “retrenching” swirled in the press, we were also treated to the…Continue Reading
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Tagged Aibo, Andrews McMeel, Arthur, B&N, Barbie, Disney, DK, Eloise, HarperCollins, Harry Potter, Hasbro, Henson, Insectazoids, itsy bitsy, J.K Rowling, Jeanne Finestone, John Lee, Kay Thompson, Klutz, Lamaze, Landoll, Learning Curve International, Linda Yates, Little Bill, Little Critter, Mattel, McClanahan Book Company, McGraw-Hill, Michael Friedman, Mike Morris, Nelvana, Nickelodeon, OshKosh B'gosh, Patrick Feely, Patty Sullivan, Peanuts, Playing for Keeps, Rachel Ginsburg, Rocket Power, School Zone, Simon & Schuster, Sterling, Tiger Electronics, Toy Manufacturers of America, Toys R Us, Tribune Education, Warner Brothers
Going, going, gone are the good old days of dropping lunchtime crumbs over the “Positions Open” section in the back of PW, when you’d gamely search for that next dream gig. (“Marketing Director, U. of Hawaii Press”? Hmmm.) Yes, clickability has hit the hiring game, with Internet job boards humming away 24/7 and recruitment field…Continue Reading
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Tagged Esther Margolis, HotJobs.com, Jobtrak.com, Lynne Palmer Associates, MediaBistro, Michael Cader, Monster.com, Newmarket Press, NYT Book Review, NYTimes.com, Penguin, Publishers Lunch, Publishers Weekly, Susan Gordon
Bruit on the Baltic Johansson in Sweden, Delerm Dines On in France, and Noll Gets Warped in Germany A “determinedly girls-eye view of events” has captivated Sweden this month, as the third and final volume in 70-year-old Swedish writer Elsie Johansson’s trilogy hits the stands with what’s been praised as “an unusual kind of bildungsroman.”…Continue Reading
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Tagged Anima Mundi, Answer Me, Antonia's Line, Arcade, Blissful Widow, Catherine Clement, Diogenes, Elsie Johansson, Follow Your Heart, French Publishers' Agency, Gallimard, Gao Xingjian, Glassbirds, Gyldenhal, HarperCollins, Hedwig Janes, Hell Hath No Fury, I Love You Too, Ingrid Noll, Joakim Pirinen, Linda Michaels, Marleen Gorris, Nancy, Ordfront, Phileine Zegt Sorry, Phillippe Delerm, Picador, Pierre Pelot, Ronald Giphart, Siesta Assassination, Susanna Tamaro, The Evening Breeze is Cold, The Swedish Monkey, The Wolves' Pact, Theo's Odyssey, We Could Almost Eat Outside, Wild Flower
Vault.com is a web site used by job seekers to get the lowdown on what it’s really like to work for a company — in full, unexpurgated, and unsubstantiated glory. Many publishers aren’t even listed, including the entire Holtzbrinck group, while Norton gets little traffic and virtually no messages. Same with S&S, which has had…Continue Reading
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT INSIDE.COM (2/6/01) It’s been a dramatic couple of weeks for Talk Miramax Books, which, after a shaky start, seems to be finding itself as a nonfiction publisher of high-profile books. Last month the house bought super-lawyer David Boies‘s memoirs, and last week it paid $3 million for a memoir and a business…Continue Reading
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Tagged David Boies, Experience, Harvey Weinstein, History of Britain, Icebound, Jerri Nielsen, Jonathan Burnham, Madeleine Albright, Malika Oufkir, Martin Amis, Maryanne Vollers, Rduolph Giuliani, Scribner's, Simon Schama, Stolen Lives: 20 Years in a Desert Jail, Talk Miramax, Tina Brown, Vicky Ward
Laura Bush ranks her shoes by color, keeps her record collection impeccably dust-free and swabs her cabinets with Clorox for kicks. And as we all read in the New York Times, the nation’s First Librarian also shelves the family volumes by the Dewey decimal system. While Washington’s power brokers eyed their dottily piled-up volumes and…Continue Reading
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Tagged Alice Waters, Dennis During, HarperCollins, Joan Mitchell, Marcella Hazan, Michael Korda, Nicholas Basbanes, Otto Penzler, Patience and Fortitude, Peter Stern, Rolland Constock, Samuel Pepys, Sarito Neiman, Susan Friedland, Umberto Eco
Are Bulked-Up Book Distributors The Industry’s Next Goliaths? Time was, you would call a guy like Gilbert Perlman a book distributor. The warehouse, the sales staff, the publishing clients, even the name on the door — Client Distribution Services — all fit the modus operandi of firms schlepping books from the presses to the masses….Continue Reading
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Tagged B&N, Borders Group, Charlie Winton, City Lights, Client Distribution Services, Consortium, Eric Kampmann, Gilbert Perlman, IBM, Ingram, iUniverse, Jim Chandler, Katherine Bright-Holmes, Ken Brooks, Larry Fox, Midpoint Trade Books, National Book Network, Phil Ollila, Publishers Group West, Publishing Dimensions, Randall Beek, Random House, Rich Freese, Simon & Schuster, Small Press Distribution
In an address to the Publishers Lunch Club last month, industry veteran Tom McCormack looked back on forty years in publishing, finding that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Here’s a condensed version of his remarks. When I first came down to New York, some folks asked me why I was…Continue Reading
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Tagged Atheneum, Avon, Barnes & Noble, Crowell, John Day, Lippincott, M.M. Kaye, Orion, Pantheon, Rawson, Schocken, Scribner's, St. Martin's, Sun, The Far Pavilions, The New York Times, The Waterfowling Book Club, Tom McCormack, Walter Meade
