Leonard Shatzkin was trained in printing. He left City College of NY a semester short of a degree in the social sciences to go to Carnegie Tech for three years to get a BS in Printing, which he received in 1941. His first job was as production manager at House Beautiful magazine when he and […]
How many more times for BEA?
I went to my first ABA (American Booksellers Association) Convention in Washington, DC in 1970. I had just written “The View from Section 111” for Prentice-Hall, about the New York Knicks’ first championship season, which was going to be published that October. Prentice-Hall threw a party for authors with a book coming that Fall, and […]
Two more Len Shatzkin anecdotes on publishing practice
Elisabeth Sifton has a long and thoughtful piece in the current issue of The Nation. I disagree with the fundamental premise — that the woes of the book business are primarily due to bad decisions or judgments by the leaders of the business rather than large forces that are changing the ground on which the […]
A new perspective on some old family publishing history
After Making Information Pay on Thursday, I had lunch with Michael Cader. One of our topics was some statistical research he is doing on the question “how many orphans”? This is his research to reveal, but I will only tell you “not nearly as many as I thought.” Part of what I learned from Michael […]
Times Book Review on advances, and related thoughts
The NY Times Book Review published a piece on advances online today to which I was first pointed by Twitter early this morning. I couldn’t tell whether author Michael Meyer was “for ’em or agin’ ’em”. On the one hand, he seemed to suggest that publishers are inclined to overpay, and he cites Public Affairs head […]