The passing of publishing giant Tom McCormack makes me recall the interaction he had with my father, Leonard Shatzkin, from the very beginning of Tom’s publishing career. The bios say he was hired as an editor at Anchor Books, Doubleday’s pioneering trade paperback imprint, in 1959, that being McCormack’s first job in publishing. The Anchor […]
Checking facts with players who are still in the game
It is four years since Covid and eight years since I have had staff helping me serve consulting clients. My insight into the commercial world of book publishing is no longer informed by daily contact with people making their living in it. In fact, a big chunk of my “professional” activity these days is helping […]
The problem with bookstores is the problem for bookstores
Three decades ago, if you wanted a trade book, you went to a bookstore or a bigger merchant like Wal-mart or a department store with a book “section”. It was actually hard to get a book any other way. That really changed starting with Amazon in 1995 and has continued to splinter since with a […]
Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
The idea that general trade publishing and general trade publishing houses were going to have to change or die was first floated here in a post in 2007 and then expanded upon in a post called “The End of the General Trade Publishing Concept” in 2019. The announcement this week that Madeline McIntosh, a very […]
What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business
Judge Florence Y. Pan ruled today that the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House could not go forward. The ruling was explicitly to protect the “competition” for the “anticipated top-selling books”. In other words, the big books by big authors for which only the Big Five can compete regularly (with occasional bids […]
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