Much of the change we are living through in publishing is plain as day to see. The shift from print to digital, like the shift from stores to online purchasing, is evident to all of us, inside the industry and out. But there’s another aspect of the change that is not nearly as visible and […]
Shocking news from the UK: Waterstones selling the Kindle
The announcement that Waterstones, the nearest UK equivalent to Barnes & Noble as a bookselling chain, will be selling the Kindle in their stores came as somewhat of a shock. There had been rumors that B&N was closing in on a deal to partner with Waterstones on the Nook. The difficulty in making deals around […]
The most important problem for publishers to solve over the next ten years
On Thursday, our clients at the Book Industry Study Group are running a “NEXT” conference which is tackling the question of what publishers (and publishing) should be doing now to be prepared for the world that we’ll be living in 10 years from now. (I love this subject and actually believe Mark Bide and I […]
As Europe’s ebook market develops, US publishers may find some sales growth
Week before last I was in Frankfurt observing that the rest of the world, including our close cultural neighbors in Europe, was going to start catching up to us in ebook uptake. A companion observation was that many book consumers in Europe are quite comfortable reading English. It is also true that many US publishers […]
Serious thoughts about the business (published by Barnes & Noble)
Daniel Menaker was not long ago the Executive Editor-in-Chief at Random House and writes knowledgeably about the state of play and state of mind inside Big Publishing today. His piece Redactor Agonistes is a psychological snapshot of a declining industry, a catalog of the frustrations that are increasingly common in an environment where, as hard […]