Category Archives: Featured Articles

Agents & E-Books Exclusive Survey Preview

The Idea Logical Company and Market Partners International recently conducted an anonymous, invitation-only survey of U.S. literary agents on the subject of e-book royalties, and many chose to comment on each question.* 135 agents took the survey. The findings—along with the reactions of seven publishing CEOs, who often questioned the agents’ contentions—will be presented by…Continue Reading

Holiday Books Survey Results Are In

For more results from this survey, check out Book-Giving Etiquette Guide and I Love You, Keith Richards. “My siblings assume that every book I get is free, so they expect books AND a ‘real present.’” “Any time I give a book, I fear it will be assumed that I did not pay for it, so…Continue Reading

Survey Results: Book-Giving Etiquette Guide

For more results from this survey, check out Holiday Books Survey Results and I Love You, Keith Richards. As we mentioned here, our final survey question was about issues of book-giving etiquette. We included a couple of prompts to get our respondents going, but were still surprised by the many thoughtful answers we received. It’s…Continue Reading

I Love You, Keith Richards

For more results from this survey, check out Holiday Books Survey Results and Book-Giving Etiquette Guide. When asked to list the books they are giving as gifts this year (whether they’re schnorring, swiping from work, or buying), respondents were extremely forthcoming—ditto when asked to list the titles they hope to receive themselves. A * indicates…Continue Reading

Marmite, Maturalism, and Mangification: What Publishers Can Learn from the World of Trends Research

In a recent interview, Random House CEO Markus Dohle said he is “convinced that publishers have to become more reader oriented in a marketing and trend finding/setting way rather than in a direct to consumer selling way.” The tricky part: How can publishers be trendspotters? In this two-part series, we will try to address that…Continue Reading

Conferentially Speaking

The 3 million iPads sold as of June were a major topic of discussion at two conferences this month: The Big Money’s Untethered 2010: Profitable Media in the Tablet Era, and the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference. Untethered was aimed more directly at book publishers, and its “Future of Book Publishing” panel included publishing head…Continue Reading

Now in Hardcover: The Series in 2010

Take a look at BookScan’s bestselling juvenile titles for the week ending April 25: an astounding 73% were titles from one of several series. But these are not your Baby-Sitters’ Club of yesteryear: “Harry Potter turned the whole paperback series notion on its head,” says Megan Tingley, SVP, Publisher, Little Brown Books for Young Readers….Continue Reading

Lessons From The Mobile Plunge

Differentiation and budgeting are key to successfully entering the booming mobile app marketplace, said panelists last month at the Publishing Business Conference’s “Making the Most out of Your Mobile Opportunity.”

Trendspotting 2010: Peter Hildick-Smith

Peter Hildick-Smith is Founder and President of the Codex Group. 2009 will be remembered as the beginning of the digital tipping point for book publishing, the year our industry took its turn as the last of the major media to enter the digital transition, following in the highly challenged footsteps of the music, newspaper, magazine,…Continue Reading

App Attack: Mobile Reading

Though we’ve recently noticed a few more Kindles on the subway, mobile phones are infinitely more common. As more consumers choose to read e-books on their smartphones rather than purchase standalone e-reading devices, publishers are working to create apps and other iPhone-ready content. Flurry, a company that provides analytics to mobile phone application developers, found…Continue Reading