Lucrative, Licensed Book Lines Are Looking Better All the Time As book publishers search in an ever-widening gyre for “consumer equity,” “points of differentiation,” and authors pre-packaged with their own “platforms,” it may be no shock that the concept of franchise publishing — partnering to publish licensed, branded, or co-branded titles, or even signing up…Continue Reading
Targeted Sales to Enthusiasts Turn the Off-Beat Into Big Bucks Looking for the bestselling art books in America? Sniffing around the Ansel Adams shelves, perhaps? Nope, not there. Taking a peek at Taschen’s Fetish Girls? Nice try. According to numbers from Nielsen BookScan, you’d better swing by the cartoon section. Because the top art titles…Continue Reading
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…Continue Reading
Book Packagers Make the Best of a Worst-Case Scenario “The advantage of working with packagers,” says Mark Magowan, associate publisher at Abrams, “is that when the math of a series goes down, you don’t have to fire your own staff.” Though Magowan may be grinning as he says it, it’s no joke that book packagers…Continue Reading
