[This is an excerpt of an article, Not So Fast: Flash-Sale Models and Publishers’ Place in the Changing Landscape of Online Retail, which was published in the September issue of Publishing Trends. To receive our newsletter in full, find out how to purchase a subscription here.] Since Publishing Trends last covered them in December 2010, flash-sales have…Continue Reading
In November, the New York Times announced that it would begin publishing e-book bestseller lists (fiction and nonfiction) in early 2011. “We wanted to be able to tell our readers which titles were selling and how they fit together with print sales,” said Janet Elder, NYT Editor of News Surveys and Election Analysis. The tracking…Continue Reading
PT thanks New York-based marketing consultant Rich Kelley for this report. “Content is no longer something you hand down from on high on a sacred tablet,” advised John Byrne, editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek. Today it’s more like “a campfire that you use to gather people. What becomes important is what then happens among the people.” The…Continue Reading
University of Denver Publishing Institute (founded 1976) Contact: Director Joyce Meskis. (303) 871-2570; e-mail pi-info [at] du.edu 2008 dates/length: July 12–August 7 (four weeks) Cost: $4,150 Number of students: 95–100 Notable faculty: Dominique Raccah, Sourcebooks; Roger Scholl, Doubleday; Susan Moldow, Simon & Schuster; Carl Lennertz, HarperCollins; Larry Kirshbaum, LJK Literary Management; Bob Miller, HarperCollins; Kris…Continue Reading
Considering the contrasting audiences — one a collection of small publishers and publishing students, and the other a pride of publishing elite, the mantra at NYU’s Center for Publishing Management Forum for Independent Publishers and PW’s Summit was the same: It’s the consumer, stupid. At NYU, this theme was picked up by several speakers, including…Continue Reading
PEOPLE November brought some big moves in the industry, with Bill Barry going to DK as President, after a hiatus of two years (he had been at Hungry Minds when it was sold to Wiley) and Jim Jordan, Director of the Johns Hopkins University Press moving to Columbia University Press as President and Director (as…Continue Reading
Amid Booming Book Biz Coverage, Critics See ‘Gaping’ News Holes First there was Keith Kelly at the New York Post. Then there were the hot-shots at Inside.com, and thus dawned a new era of frenzied jockeying among daily media scribes to fling arrows into the side of the homely book publishing business. While stalwarts such…Continue Reading
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…Continue Reading
Ebooks are: (a) dead (b) undead (c) other. If you answered “all of the above,” you are more correct than you know. As spring turns to summer, not just the trees but oddly enough ebooks — through whose black heart the New York Times drove a stake last fall — are sprouting. Palm, which has…Continue Reading
Trading Places Guillou Turns Publisher, Potter Imposter in Spain, and Bridget Jones Down Under The prolific writer-turned-publisher Jan Guillou has commandeered the top three slots in Sweden this month, all of them part of his journey through the Middle Ages. At the top of the heap is the third in his trilogy based on the…Continue Reading
