Laura Hazard Owen | February 2010
After Ipsos/NPD, which provided consumer data to the Book Industry Study Group’s Trends, exited the market, publishers struggled to get timely—or detailed—data on their consumers, and because their customers were retailers, they had little idea of who their readers were. The data that existed was too generic and surveyors often used questionable methodologies to get [...]
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, [...]
Laura Hazard Owen | May 2009
Would you rather read a “splendid, funny, lyrical book about family, truth, memory, and the resilience of love” or a “powerful novel” about “the strength of love and loss, the searing ramifications of war, and the mysterious, almost magical bonds that unite and sustain us”? A “poignant celebration of the potency of familial love” or [...]
Laura Hazard Owen | December 2008
To be on the Web or not to be on the Web—sorry, technophobic authors, that’s no longer the question. Rather, what should be on your website and how can you draw traffic to it? There’s no universal key to success. But with help from a recent groundbreaking report and four web designers who specialize in [...]