Amazon dropped a shoe last week when they announced their new mystery imprint, Thomas & Mercer Books, and started signing authors, including self-publishing evangelist, Joe Konrath. Last night they dropped the other shoe, which turned out to be a very heavy boot. They signed former Time Warner Publishing (the company that is now Hachette Book […]
Archives for May 2011
eBook sales comparisons to print aren’t always what they seem
When Amazon talks about how ebooks are selling in relation to print books, as they did again this week, they are comparing apples to apples. They are comparing what their customers bought in digital form versus what they bought in print in any given period of time. When PW or the AAP or even the […]
Consignment might be helpful, but it is not a panacea and not easy to implement
One of the commenters on the blog asked last week about consignment selling, because, he believes, a number of publishers are entertaining it. (I am not personally aware of that, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable that they would be contemplating it.) This is a subject I’ve paid some attention to over the years, partly because […]
“A Global Perspective on Digital Change” will be our first show in London
The first Publishers Launch Conferences show outside the United States, “A Global Perspective on Digital Change”, will be at the Congress Centre in central London on June 21, with the Publishers Association serving as our partners in putting on the event. We also owe special thanks to the PA’s group of Digital Directors, who were […]
The old publishing value chain got twisted a bit last week
Although the value chain in trade publishing for the last century has, for the most part, kept retailers between publishers and consumers and kept publishers between retailers and authors, that has never been 100% true. Doubleday covered the whole value chain in the 1950s, when it not only owned the Doubleday Book Shops and the […]