News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
March 2005
Book Clubs Reinvent the Digital World If the term ‘book club’ evokes a muddled mélange (if not somewhat terrifying dream) of Oprah covering Tolstoy in gold stickers, growing legions of like-minded enthusiasts discussing scrapbooks or maybe even booksellers in Kabul, classes filled with Scholastic catalogs offering Shrek 2 tie-ins, while exclamation-point-laden mailers emblazoned with “6 [...]
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November 2004
Life on the road ain’t what it used to be, and the easy money’s long gone. Such is the tale of most independent sales reps — but, on the other hand, “it’s a hell of a lot better than being in house!” attests New England’s Nanci McCrackin, who’s not alone in her sentiment. West Coast [...]
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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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July 2004
People June was a relatively quiet month, though that doesn’t guarantee a quiet summer, judging from the increase of job listings on industry job boards and murmurings around town: Harold Augenbraum is leaving The Mercantile Library to become Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, effective July 12. A search committee has been formed to [...]
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May 2004
People April is the cruelest month for some; but for others, it’s been a banner one. And for the industry as a whole, there’s been a whirlwind of activity, with enough moves, consolidations, entries and exits to rival a Feydeau or Frayn farce. Sara Nelson, Glamour’s Senior Contributing Editor, Books, and columnist for The New [...]
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March 2004
It was a sign of the times last month when, at a three-day meeting in Beijing that brought 170 Chinese publishers together with a group of US industry veterans, the Communist Party commissar dropped in on the event — and participants barely raised an eyebrow at the apparatchik’s visit. Yes, a “private book industry” is [...]
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September 2003
S&S, Scholastic Among Houses Pondering the Product Pipeline While a well-oiled supply chain has been an obsession among other industries over the last two decades, book publishers have only recently begun to put the product pipeline front and center on the radar screen as they try to banish “inventory obsolescence” — products washing up on [...]
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May 2003
“Best of times, worst of times” was the Dickensian scenario facing representatives from more than 50 publishing houses who hunkered down at the first Management Forum for Independent Publishers, hosted April 4-6 by NYU’s Center for Publishing. At the top of the agenda? “The economy, the economy, the economy,” chanted Center for Publishing Director Robert [...]
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April 2003
70,000-Odd Small Publishers Might Be Wagging Your Dog They’re out there — all 73,000 of them — scrabbling for your shelf-space, mucking up your mindshare. That’s the number of book publishers in the US, according to Bowker’s Books in Print database, and it has nearly doubled in the past decade. Blame the go-go ’90s, the [...]
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March 2003
PEOPLE John Kilcullen, previously CEO of Hungry Minds, has been named President of VNU’s Music and Literary Group and Publisher of Billboard. He will also oversee Bookseller and Kirkus Reviews, Music & Media, and Airplay Monitor. As dissected daily in the NYT, Daniel Menaker was named SVP and Editor-in-Chief of the Random House editorial imprints. [...]
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