News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
Laura Hazard Owen | June 2009
Though nobody’s immune to the bad economy, distributors haven’t taken as much of a hit as other groups in publishing this year. “It’s easier in this economy to be working with a large distribution group,” says Eugenia Pakalik, Director of Sales and Marketing Distribution Services at Norton. The ideal IPM client, says Jane Graf, Director [...]
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Laura Hazard Owen | February 2009
It’s hard to remember a time when Netflix didn’t seem like a good idea. The company opened its first distribution center, in San Jose, CA, in 1998, and initially aimed to create the typical Blockbuster experience: Each rental was $4, plus $2 for postage, and there were late fees. In a 2002 interview with Wired [...]
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January 2009
David Rothman Founder, Teleread.org Sure, Oprah loves the Kindle, Amazon’s gizmo for reading electronic books, even if it looks a bit like a Soviet-made adding machine. And a second model probably will be on the way—in fact, perhaps two. We just might see an econo-Kindle and a large-screened version for students. Forbes is so excited [...]
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Laura Hazard Owen | November 2008
They’re not yet ubiquitous on the subway. And the “paperless office” is still a dream at this point. Our second annual industry survey of industry professionals found that 70% of respondents had never read an e-book. It’s unlikely that entry-level employees will receive shiny new Sony Readers with their company handbooks any time soon. Still, [...]
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Laura Hazard Owen | October 2008
It’s polling season, and PT’s not exempt! This year, 385 people who work in publishing took our survey; 86.5% completed it. The largest group of respondents were literary agents (26.8%), while the majority of respondents at publishing houses work in editorial (40.6%), followed by rights (6.3%) and sales (5.7%). 10% are 22–27, 25% are 28–35, [...]
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While eagerly awaiting Kindle, netGalley, and all the other cool launches in 2008, some publishers are working with what we have in the here-and-now: the Sony Reader. Simon & Schuster started giving it (officially, The Reader Digital Book) to sales reps, so that they could download manuscripts at will, and carry the Reader on their [...]
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September 2007
So now there are two more e-book devices going head to head with Sony’s Reader, and neither of them is talking about it. Yet. First there is the iPhone, which some see as the publishing industry’s first viable ePhoneBook, though Apple’s interest appears to be nonexistent. Still, when it was first introduced, the CNET editors [...]
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August 2007
It’s over, tape worms. Audio Renaissance published its last cassette this year: Janet Evanovich’s Lean Mean Thirteen. Random House Audio reports a format breakdown of 85% CDs and 15% digital downloads, with tape sales negligible. Retailers don’t sell cassettes, duplicators don’t duplicate them, and publishers don’t produce them anymore. Audible.com, often considered the benchmark of [...]
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April 2006
Digital Publishing Goes Mainstream. PT Attempts To Make a Meal Out of the Proverbial ePie This month we decided to tackle the Sisyphean task of coming up with eNumbers – stats for the digital side of the biz. For the Book Publishing industry, eBooks are the most literal digital translation – books, in every sense [...]
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