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Ruminating about returns

April 7, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 2 Comments

The subject of eliminating returns seems to come up more and more frequently these days. Last week we were interviewing a major independent bookseller for our BISG “Shifting Sales Channels” project and they brought it up. In this case, they were complaining about the new “no returns” policy from HarperStudio. As I understand what the […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Publishing, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Baker & Taylor, BISG, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ingram, returns

This is a post about nothing; it doesn’t count

April 3, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 1 Comment

This is a post about “no post today”. Or maybe this is a Seinfeld post. Its about nothing. A particular number of years ago that my friend Lorraine Shanley of Market Partners could tell you and I can’t — but I would say about 15 — she confided that she thought it would be smart […]

Filed Under: Autobiographical, Baseball, Chuckles, Publishing History Tagged With: Lorraine Shanley, Market Partners International, Michael Cader, Publishers Lunch, Publshing Trends, Richard Charkin

Len Shatzkin and the breaking of a publishing color line

April 2, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 8 Comments

There was a lot of lore in our family but one of my favorite bits of it was my father’s great pride at having hired the first two black office workers at Doubleday in the 1950s. This was particularly cheeky for the guy who was the only Jew in top management ranks. The way I […]

Filed Under: Autobiographical, Publishing History Tagged With: Advise and Consent, Branch Rickey, Charles Harris, Ed Simmons, Eleanor Shatzkin, Jackie Robinson, John Sargent, Karen Shatzkin, Leonard Shatzkin, Nance Shatzkin, Nelson Doubleday, Ray Rivera, The Urban League

Second old publishing story: the first great book supply chain tech disruption

March 7, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 2 Comments

Before the early 1970s, wholesalers to the trade were local and carried a relatively small number of titles. Their main job was to back up bestsellers and local booksellers went direct to the publishers for just about everything else. Baker & Taylor was national, but focused on the library market. And Ingram was a small […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Publishing, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: B. Dalton, Baker & Taylor, Bell & Howell, Harry Hoffman, Ingram, Michael Zibart

First old publishing story: Brentano’s in 1962

February 28, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 9 Comments

My first real “job” in publishing was working as a sales clerk at Brentano’s flagship bookstore on 5th Avenue in the summer of 1962. I was deployed to the paperback department, which had opened only weeks before. In those days, almost all real consumer paperbacks were “mass-market”, rack-sized paperbacks. And almost all of what we […]

Filed Under: Authors, Autobiographical, Chuckles, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Brentano's, John Dos Passos, Mayor Wagner, paperbacks 1962

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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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