I was honored today with a lengthy response to a recent Shatzkin Files post on the Digital Book World blog from Neil Balthasar, who apparently uses techniques similar to those in a forthcoming book “The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of a Blockbuster Novel”. My post had been a response to a PW article announcing the upcoming […]
The “Big Change” era in trade book publishing ended about four years ago
Book publishing is still very much in a time of changing conditions and circumstances. There are a host of unknowables about the next several years that affect the shape of the industry and the strategies of all the players in it. But as publishers, retailers, libraries, and their ecosystem partners prepare for whatever is next, […]
Full text examination by computer is very unlikely to predict bestsellers
PW currently has a story on a forthcoming St. Martin’s book called “The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of The Blockbuster Novel” in which authors Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers “claim they created an algorithm that identifies the literary elements that guarantee a book a spot on the bestseller lists.” As readers of The Shatzkin Files know, […]
The sea change that comes with the latest iteration of the book ecosystem
In the past 10 years (since the mid-2000s), the ebook has arrived and the amount of shelf space for books in physical retail has declined, as book purchasing has continued to move to the Internet. This has put pressure on publishers’ distribution costs, as we discussed in a prior post. In the 10 years before […]
Things are calmer than they were in the book business, but change is a constant
Among the shifts that have been taking place in publishing houses over the past decade is an increase in the head count dedicated to marketing and a decrease in head count dedicated to sales. This reflects the reduction in the number of bookstore accounts and the transfer of “discovery” from store shelves to digital search. […]
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