The Idea Logical Company provides strategic thought leadership to book and journal publishers and to their trading partners. We have a special interest in the challenges and opportunities presented by digital change. Some of Idea Logical's recent projects include:
  • Helping a major trade publisher measure the cost and impact of digital marketing
  • Assessing the cost of galleys and ARCs for two major trade publishers
  • Measuring the potential savings from better printing decisions for a major trade publisher
  • Assessing the capabilities of eight Digital Asset Distributors in the US and Europe
  • Co-organizing and speaking at DADs conferences in New York and London
  • Helping strategize and execute the launch of a new platform for the industry to connect publishers and reviewers
  • Designing and installing a new production scheduling system for an illustrated book publisher
  • Defining use cases and calculating ROI impact for a publisher considering engaging a Digital Asset Distributor
  • Delivering addresses to industry gatherings at BookExpo America, London Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, and for publishers in Sydney, Australia
  • Co-organizing and emceeing Google's "Unbound" conference in New York City
The company's experience with publishing's digital transition is long. Idea Logical's Founder and CEO Mike Shatzkin co-organized what may have been the first two conferences on digital change for general publishers, sponsored by Publishers Weekly and Knowledge Industry Publications, in 1992 and 1993. Through the rest of the 1990s, Shatzkin was co-chair, with Mark Bide of Rightscom in the UK, of VISTA's "Publishing in the 21st Century" research program. That encompassed the creation and publication of annual research papers, the presentation of semi-annual conferences in both New York and London, and a group called The Editorial Board especially recruited to provide thought leadership. The Editorial Board was comprised of journalists, consultants, retired industry leaders, and academics with a special knowledge of publishing from around the world. A great deal of "value chain" analysis was produced by this program, which has proven useful and has been repeatedly validated in the first decade of the 21st Century.

In the Spring of 2000, we co-organized the "Publishing 2010" conference at the London Book Fair and in October of 2001 we organized and chaired the "Big Questions" conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair, for which more than 200 executives from all over the world added a day to their busy Frankfurt schedules to discuss the industry's future.

At this writing (March 2008), Idea Logical is working with the US's Book Industry Study Group to assess the state of :"experimentation and innovation" among publishers today. The results of a survey of about 500 industry participants and several Case Studies will be presented at BISG's annual Making Information Pay conference on May 9, 2008.

Idea Logical's strategic clients have included most of the industry's biggest names but also promising start-ups. One current client is Rosetta Solutions, creators of netGalley, an emerging community and tool set to unite publishers and reviewers. Over the years, we have worked with SoftBook, one of the first handheld "ebook readers"; Sprout, the pioneers of digital print-in-store technology (long before the Expresso Machine); OverDrive Systems, leaders in digital publishing and distribution systems; SealedMedia, a Digital Rights Management firm; and Publishing Dimensions, one of the industry leaders in format conversions for ebooks.

In the late 1990s, we created a whole new business from scratch for The Butterick Company that sells the books of all publishers to specialty stores using automated distribution techniques we conceived and formulated. That distribution company is called West Broadway Book Distribution; it is an active and thriving business today.

We have helped develop brand-extending publishing opportunities for Butterick and Vogue Patterns, Family Circle magazine, Variety, the Petersen specialty magazines, and the Discovery networks, among many others.

Idea Logical has its own "vertical", an information site called BaseballLibrary.com that has millions of words and tens of thousands of Internet pages of baseball history. And most years we sell a project or two as an agent; one of our titles in current distribution is The Great Wall, by Michael Yamashita, published by Sterling in 2007.  
 
Copyright ? 2002 The Idea Logical Company, Inc.
Consulting ? Speeches ? Clients ? Baseball ? About Us