It was just about two years ago that I appeared on a panel at a meeting of agents with, among others, Macmillan CEO John Sargent and Sargent made the point that maintaining ebook pricing and margins was one of the critical challenges facing publishers. Ebook sales were still hovering around one percent of the business. […]
Random House joining the (formerly) Agency 5, and what it might mean
Now the Big Six are all selling ebooks on the agency model. Random House has joined their five competitors. It is almost a year since Apple launched the iPad, opened the iBookstore, and delivered big publishers an opportunity to rewrite the rules of the ebook marketplace, at least for their books and at least for […]
Selling the backlist (and other things) and finding the next battleground
My generation of publishers is distinguished by a few that really understand the opportunities and value to the enterprise of selling backlist and creating evergreens. Peter Workman is the master of this. Quite aside from the intrinsic quality and appeal of much of what he publishes — which is considerable — he has always pushed […]
Can big publishers compete if the coin of the realm is “names”?
In a conversation earlier this week I learned that the big Hollywood talent agencies have come to the recognition that “audience aggregation”, a component of what I have been calling a “vertical” strategy, needs to be incorporated into their thinking going forward. This was signaled very strongly recently when longtime publisher Steve Ross took his […]
Three fledglings that really should fly
Sometimes you hear of an idea or a new business that seems so right-on-the-money that you wish you had invested in it and figure it is just a matter of time before it grows into something very powerful and important. Here are three of those — all of which should be of interest to publishers […]
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