News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
January 2006
PEOPLE Even the seemingly endless holiday period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s hasn’t dulled the urge to move: Jeff Abraham, Executive Director of BISG, has been appointed President, Random House Distribution Services, a new position. John Groton, VP, Client Relations, and Kevin Mailloux, Director, Operations Distribution Services, will report to him and he will report [...]
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August 2005
The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Publishing Convention, Seminar, and Summit In the golden years of the publishing conference, 400 people clamoring for access to a panel, summit or seminar, wasn’t unheard of. Some frequenters admit to going to upwards of 10 conferences a year in the late 1990′s techno boom, while others [...]
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May 2005
NYU’s Center for Publishing hosted its third Management Forum for Small and Independent Publishers April 15-16, and got an impressive turnout from around the country. Director Robert Baensch hosted the event. Friday morning was devoted to the Big Picture, and Bruce Harris, who headed sales at Random before going to Workman and now, consulting, gave [...]
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October 2004
People As Fall sets in, there are many jobs that are being vacated, created, and filled. Those leaving include Becky Cabaza, Editorial Director at Three Rivers/Crown, who is becoming a freelance editorial consultant. She can be reached at (973) 280-2429 and by e-mail at bcabaza@hotmail.com. … Susan Naythons, EVP Sales, is leaving PGW to spend [...]
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February 2004
PEOPLE Following the doldrums of December, January brought some major moves, including Michael Jacobs’ sortie from Scholastic, and David Steinberger’s installation as the President and CEO of the Perseus Books Group. Movement is everywhere: Random House has combined its two separate retail sales forces into a single unit, resulting in the departure of at least [...]
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December 2002
Despite being ritually deemed “the bane of the publishing industry” and “one of the costliest aspects of the business,” the problem of book returns remains an estimated $7 billion thorn in the industry’s side. Last year, BISG figures show, the average adult trade hardcover return rate was 37.5%, up 3% from the year before. Publishing’s [...]
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August 2002
PEOPLE We will skip over the Thomas Middelhoff debacle, and move on to some moves that are less well covered, including that by a Middelhoff chronicler: The NYT’s David Kirkpatrick is leaving the Book Beat, to cover media, focusing on AOL Time Warner, along with Vivendi, Bertelsmann, and News Corp. His replacement will be named [...]
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May 2001
PEOPLE Candy Lee, formerly CEO of Troll Communications, has joined iFormation Group as the MD of Sales & Marketing. Launched in June 2000, iFormation is a partnership of The Boston Consulting Group, General Atlantic Partners, and Goldman Sachs that partners with “the world’s leading companies by investing in and operating new technology businesses that leverage [...]
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Publishers Scrimmage Amid Dwindling Mass Market Suppliers The idiom of mass market book sales pops with so much merchandisers’ slang you could almost mistake it for a new extreme sport. You got your “lane blockers,” your “waterfalls,” your “power wings” and “gravity sleeves.” There are “clip strips” dangling product ready-to-hand, and “candyless checkouts” cheered by [...]
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March 2000
The Digital Rights Management & Digital Distribution for Publishing conference in New York on February 23–24 was something of a set piece ripped straight out of an early Ionesco script, with non sequitur following hard on the heels of non sequitur. Digital rights vendors continued to perform feats of creative visualization (“This is going to [...]
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