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Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be

February 6, 2023 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

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 […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Barnes & Noble, Big Five, David Wilk, Hachette, HarperCollins, James Daunt, Macmillan, Madeline McIntosh, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster

What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business

November 1, 2022 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

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 […]

Filed Under: Atomization, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Uncategorized Tagged With: Big Five, Hachette, HarperCollins, Ingram, Penguin Random House, PRH, S&S, Simon & Schuster

How book publishing has changed in recent decades and the puzzling question of what comes next

June 19, 2022 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

My book business career (on the fringes since 1958 and pretty fully immersed since 1973) has been spent considering the path from “intellectual property creator” to “book purchaser”. This is a world occupied by authors and packagers and agents; by publishers of various sizes and capabilities coordinating the many tasks and steps from the raw […]

Filed Under: Atomization, Authors, General Trade Publishing, Global, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Uncategorized Tagged With: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, bookstore sales, direct-to-consumer marketing of books, Ingram Content Companies, Ingram Spark, Kindle, online sales

Doubts about the Department of Justice’s objection to the PRH acquisition of S&S

November 16, 2021 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

There are, at this moment, still five US commercial book publishers of mega-size. Penguin Random House is the biggest; HarperCollins is 2nd; and Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster round out the Big Five. PRH is, approximately, as big as the other four combined (about $4 billion in sales) and HarperCollins is, approximately, as big […]

Filed Under: Authors, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Binyamin Appelbaum, Costco, Hachette, HarperCollins, Ingram, Lightning Print, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Print-On-Demand, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press, Tom McCormack, Walmart

Every publishing strategy should start with Amazon and Ingram

October 26, 2021 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

Having been out of the day-to-day of book publishing for a few years now, and — like most people — cut off from most routine commercial conversations in the nearly two years of the pandemic, I took a look at some recent opportunities I encountered online to catch up with today’s book biz realities through […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing History, Self-Publishing, SEO, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon, Bookbub, Ignition, Ingram, Ingram Insights, IngramSpark, KDP, Kindle, Kindle Direct Publishing, Legible.com, Open Road Integrated Media

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Mike Shatzkin

Mike Shatzkin is the Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company and a widely-acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry. Read more.

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Recent Posts

  • Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
  • Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!
  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author
  • What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business
  • “Automated ebook marketing by Open Road; can anybody else do it?”

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  • Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
  • Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!
  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author

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