Speech given at BEA 2009. Focusing on the changes that will take place in publishing in the next 20 years. With a look back to the last 20 years, we are able to look forward and predict not only how publishing will be in the future, but also how information will be shared.
Archives for May 2009
How many more times for BEA?
I went to my first ABA (American Booksellers Association) Convention in Washington, DC in 1970. I had just written “The View from Section 111” for Prentice-Hall, about the New York Knicks’ first championship season, which was going to be published that October. Prentice-Hall threw a party for authors with a book coming that Fall, and […]
Two more Len Shatzkin anecdotes on publishing practice
Elisabeth Sifton has a long and thoughtful piece in the current issue of The Nation. I disagree with the fundamental premise — that the woes of the book business are primarily due to bad decisions or judgments by the leaders of the business rather than large forces that are changing the ground on which the […]
The publisher’s evolving role
Michael Cairns has a really good post today that distills a lot of thoughts I have had over the last several years into a clear formulation: that the publisher needs to serve as a “digital concierge” for its author. Three years ago, Brian O’Leary, Ted Hill, and I did a study of marketing spend for […]
Another thought about how deals might change in the ebook value chain
There has been a lot of discussion about ebook pricing lately. I did a post following Motoko Rich writing about this in the Times, but Rich’s post itself was a sign of the discussion taking place, not the catalyst for it. Today in Publishers Lunch, Michael Cader runs through some calculations to demonstrate that when […]