News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
August 2007
It’s over, tape worms. Audio Renaissance published its last cassette this year: Janet Evanovich’s Lean Mean Thirteen. Random House Audio reports a format breakdown of 85% CDs and 15% digital downloads, with tape sales negligible. Retailers don’t sell cassettes, duplicators don’t duplicate them, and publishers don’t produce them anymore. Audible.com, often considered the benchmark of [...]
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September 2005
Audible Braces as MediaBay and Amazon Enter, Growth Continues Across the Board Talking to audio publishers is like walking into a small town where everyone knows everyone else and all of the competition is friendly — at this point everybody is so excited by the potential growth of the industry that they seem willing to [...]
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January 2005
Last week’s news about Google closing in on its goal of a global virtual library by partnering with the likes of Oxford University and the New York Public Library is a good place to start with a roundup of our reporting throughout 2004 — a year that felt much like the early 1990s, before people’s [...]
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April 2004
Sleek, Digital Audio Players Could Be ‘Cable TV for Books’ The book-on-tape is a dying breed. But another analog-era ending is no tear-jerker for the audiobook industry, according to publishers and retailers who are witnessing an array of new audio formats such as MP3 CDs, digital downloads, and even satellite radio feeds that are swiftly [...]
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November 2002
PEOPLE Change is the constant in publishing at the moment: Bookspan cut its staff by about a dozen people, including longtimers Norm Schneider, VP Marketing, and Nancy Whitin, who oversaw the Specialty Clubs, including The Good Cook, History, Crafters, Country Homes, Military, Stage & Screen, Mystery Guild, etc. Natalie Chapman has been named VP, Publisher, [...]
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