I was talking to one of the smart C-level people from a major house at a party last June at BEA in Los Angeles. He was very excited about what his company had accomplished. “We’ve set up a database and CMS so we can deliver a web page for every book a web page for […]
Talking to the agents, and introducing Filedby
I was flattered to be asked to speak to the AAR last night as part of a very distinguished group. My fellow panelists were John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan; Morgan Entrekin, the CEO of Atlantic Monthly Press; the agent Larry Kirshbaum, who was CEO of TimeWarner’s book division (now Hachette Book Group); and Susan Katz, the […]
Writing about Clay Shirky writing about newspapers
One of the great thinkers about digital change is NYU professor Clay Shirky. I have been reading posts and articles from him for years and he is always cogent and sensible. He has just posted a very insightful piece about the challenges faced by newspapers. Shirky doesn’t explictly say that he’s exploring the “vertical/horizontal” dichotomy […]
The author-publisher deal needs tweaking
I just want to riff briefly on a challenge; I am still thinking about what might be a solution, or even an approach to a solution. Here’s the challenge. We need some creative dealmaking between authors and publishers. The partnership is getting more complicated. Publishers (will always) need authors and (most) authors (still) need publishers. […]
Imprints in the 21st Century
HarperCollins announced a new imprint yesterday. And once again, we see no evidence that the big general trade publishers understand how to attack their new challenges in the 21st century. The difficulty for publishers, as readers of mine know, because I’ve written and spoken about it repeatedly, is that the “horizontal” infrastructure that has supported […]