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Can crowd-sourced retailing give Amazon a run for its money?

December 16, 2015 by Mike Shatzkin 35 Comments

Although it has always seemed sensible for publishers to sell their books (and then ebooks) directly to end users, it has never looked to me like that could be a very big business. In the online environment, your favorite “store” — the one you’re loyal to and perhaps even have an investment in patronizing (which […]

Filed Under: Atomization, Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Global, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Technology Tagged With: Aer.io, Aerbook, Amazon, American West, Barnes & Noble, Bertelsmann, BN .com, Bookish, Books Online, Borders, Google, Hachette, Hummingbird, I2S2, Ingram, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Penguin, Random House, Ron Martinez, Simon & Schuster, The Book Depository, Zola Books

Asking whether Amazon is friend or foe is a simple question that is complicated to answer

March 15, 2015 by Mike Shatzkin 56 Comments

I’ve been invited to join a discussion entitled “Amazon: Friend or Foe” (meaning “for publishers”) sponsored by the Digital Media Group of the Worshipful Company of Stationers (only in England!) and taking place in London next month. I think the answer must be “both”, and I suspect that my discussion-mates — Fionnuala Duggan, formerly of […]

Filed Under: Atomization, Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Global, New Models, Scale, Self-Publishing, Subscriptions, Supply-Chain, Technology Tagged With: 24Symbols, Aerbook, Amazon, Amazon Prime, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Big Five, Bluefire, Bookmate, Coursesmart, De Marque, Digital Media Group, Encyclopedia Britannica, Finitiv, Fionnuala Duggan, Google, Impelsys, Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, Kobo, London Book Fair, Michael Ross, Nook, Oyster, Page Foundry, Philip Walters, Random House, Scribd, Smashwords, Steve Jobs, Tizra, Waterstone's, Worshipful Company of Stationers

The implications of the computer moving from the desktop to our hip pocket

November 4, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 13 Comments

Benedict Evans of Andreessen/Horowitz (an indispensible observer of digital change across media, and an analyst who explains Amazon better than any other I know) did a presentation called “Mobile is Eating the World”. It spells out the fact that just about everybody is going to have smartphones with connectivity very soon. One slide (slide 6) […]

Filed Under: Atomization, Authors, General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Aerbook, Amazon Author Central, Andreessen/Horowitz, Benedict Evans, Bong, Chromecast, Citia, Duck Duck Go, Facebook, Google, iPhone, Linda Holliday, Ron Martinez, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wolphram Alpha

It is hard for publishers to apply even Harvard B School advice in their struggle with Amazon

July 15, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 109 Comments

Harvard Business Review published an article recently by Benjamin Edelman called “Mastering the Intermediaries” which gives advice to businesses trying to avoid some of the consequences of audience aggregation and control by an intermediary. The article was aimed at restaurants who don’t want their fate controlled by Open Table or travel companies who don’t want […]

Filed Under: Digital Book World, Direct response, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Supply-Chain Tagged With: "The Everything Store", Aerbook, Amazon, American Airlines, Apple, Ashley Gordon, B&N, Baker & Taylor, Benjamin Edelman, Big Five, Bluefire, Book.ish, Chris Kubica, Donnelley, Eugene Volokh, Expedia, Fandango, Foodler, Google, Grubhub, Hachette, HarperCollins, Harvard Business Review, Ingram, Jeff Stone, Joe Regal, John Sargent, Kayak, Kindle, Macmillan, MovieTickets, Open Table, Oyster, Penguin Random House, Peter Meyers, PRH, Robert Bork, Scribd, Zola Books

The truth is we do not yet know whether ebooks will work for anything except readerly books

December 4, 2013 by Mike Shatzkin 36 Comments

In the 1990s, Mark Bide would always begin the “Publishing in the 21st Century” conferences we ran by reviewing the research we had done around some aspect of digital change in publishing with the admonition that book publishing was “many very different businesses.” By that, Mark meant that trade publishers (who sold primarily through bookstores) […]

Filed Under: eBooks, General Trade Publishing, New Models, Vertical Tagged With: "What Technology Wants", Aerbook, Aptara, Books in Browsers, Citia, Dr. David Hessayon, Experts guides, Inkling, Kevin Kelly, Mark Bide, Nate Hoffelder, New York Times, O'Reilly, Pearson, Peter Brantley, Peter Meyers, Publishing in the 21st Century, Random House, Random House UK, Safari

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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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Recent Posts

  • Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
  • Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!
  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author
  • What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business
  • “Automated ebook marketing by Open Road; can anybody else do it?”

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