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October 2011
At the Children’s Publishing Goes Digital conference, hosted by Publishers Launch and the Frankfurt Book Fair, and chaired by Lorraine Shanley of Market Partners International and Publishing Trends, some unexpected themes emerged from the assembled speakers: Kids (or perhaps their parents) are not buying ebooks, so (for now) print books are still big. That goes [...]
People Steve Wasserman has joined Yale University Press as Executive Editor-at-Large, General Interest books. He remains with Kneerim & Williams as a literary agent. He was previously Literary Editor of the LA Times and Editorial Director of Times Books. Literary agent David Hale Smith has joined Inkwell Management, bringing his own list with him. He [...]
People Philip Patrick has joined Amazon.com, in Seattle, as Senior Leader, Rights & Licensing. He was most recently VP, Digital & Marketing Strategy, Publisher Ebooks at Crown Publishing Group. Margot Schupf has left her position as VP, Publisher, Sterling Innovation. She was previously SVP, Editorial Director, Digital Publishing for the Morrow/Avon/Eos group. Meanwhile, Derry Wilkins, [...]
The Idea Logical Company and Market Partners International recently conducted an anonymous, invitation-only survey of U.S. literary agents on the subject of e-book royalties, and many chose to comment on each question.* 135 agents took the survey. The findings—along with the reactions of seven publishing CEOs, who often questioned the agents’ contentions—will be presented by [...]
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Laura Hazard Owen | November 2008
This morning, I attended the beginning of BISG‘s BISAC meeting, so that I could see Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company present selected results from his recent “StartwithXML” Survey. For more info, go here: http://toc.oreilly.com/startwithxml/, or if you’re not sure what XML is, go to Tools of Change’s “XML” explanation. Also, learn more at [...]
Mike Shatzkin is the Founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company, Inc. Cloud computing is the term for using computing resources that don’t sit on your desktop, but reside somewhere out on the Internet. The computer resources in “the cloud” could be storage capacity—hard drive space where you are storing data bits that you [...]
PEOPLE As was anticipated, Marie Toulantis has resigned from her position as CEO of BarnesandNoble.com. She had been with the company since 2002 and will continue to serve as a consultant. Tom Burke, VP E-Commerce, and Kevin Frain, CFO, have temporarily assumed her duties. They report to Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio. Marjorie Braman, [...]
Publishers and Booksellers Re-Assess Their Backlists, Stocking Deeper, While Printing Less, Plus: Looking Beyond the Shelf Backlist has always been a cash cow for those willing to milk it. Publishers have long tried enticing booksellers with annual promotions, Buy-Now-Pay-Later deals, Just In Time Inventory and the like – all with the hope of boosting their [...]
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 [...]
Specialty Distributors Dominate Markets Publishers Can’t Touch Last month’s profile of distributors into the traditional book market only revealed the tip of the sales iceberg, as publishers expand their special sales departments in hopes of reaching a broader (read non-bookstore) array of consumers. Enter the specialty distributor. In a retail landscape where books are accessories [...]