Although it has always seemed sensible for publishers to sell their books (and then ebooks) directly to end users, it has never looked to me like that could be a very big business. In the online environment, your favorite “store” — the one you’re loyal to and perhaps even have an investment in patronizing (which […]
Big focus at DBW 2016 on the tech companies that are shaping the world the book business has to live in
Realities change. Ever since Amazon arrived in the “book business” 20 years ago, each year the “book business” has become less and less of a stand-alone industry. Of course, the only part that ever really was a stand-alone was the trade business, where the entire ecosystem: authors and their agents, publishers, booksellers, and even — […]
A 10-point strategy for mini-vertical creation
The last post here, where I suggested that publishers should reconsider how they handle first serials, begs a number of follow-up questions. Two people commenting on the post raised the concern that HarperCollins wouldn’t have been able to handle the traffic the “Go Set A Watchman” excerpt would generate. My IT advisors say that is […]
Market research used to be a silly idea for publishers but it is not anymore
When my father, Leonard Shatzkin, was appointed Director of Research at Doubleday in the 1950s, it was a deliberate attempt to give him license to use analytical techniques to affect how business was done across the company. He had started out heading up manufacturing, with a real focus on streamlining the number of trim sizes […]
Considering the very wide range of digital change topics that should be candidates for discussion at DBW 2016
The challenge for the book business for the past decade has been rapid and less-than-predictable changes in the ecosystem because of digital. There are two underlying shifts that fundamentally alter the ecosystem: people substituting ebook consumption for print book consumption and people substituting online purchase of printed books for buying them in stores. These two […]
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