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 […]
This is a post about nothing; it doesn’t count
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 […]
Len Shatzkin and the breaking of a publishing color line
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 […]
Second old publishing story: the first great book supply chain tech disruption
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 […]
First old publishing story: Brentano’s in 1962
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 […]
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