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Market research used to be a silly idea for publishers but it is not anymore

June 2, 2015 by Mike Shatzkin 6 Comments

When my father, Leonard Shatzkin, was appointed Director of Research at Doubleday in the 1950s, it was a deliberate attempt to give him license to use analytical techniques to affect how business was done across the company. He had started out heading up manufacturing, with a real focus on streamlining the number of trim sizes […]

Filed Under: Direct response, eBooks, Global, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, rights, Scale, Self-Publishing, SEO, Supply-Chain, Technology Tagged With: Amazon, Anchor Books, Andrew Weber, Dolphin Books, Doubleday, Jason Epstein, Leonard Shatzkin, Logical Marketing, Pete McCarthy, Pinterest, Random House, YouTube

Amazon channels Orwell in its latest blast

August 9, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 243 Comments

Anybody who reads Amazon’s latest volley in the Amazon-Hachette war and then David Streitfeld’s takedown of it on the New York Times’s web site will know that Amazon — either deliberately or with striking ignorance — distorted a George Orwell quote to make it appear that he was against low-priced paperbacks when he was actually […]

Filed Under: Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, New Models, Publishing History, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain Tagged With: 1984, Amazon, Anchor Books, Ballantine, Brentano's, David Streitfeld, Doubleday, Douglas Preston, Espresso Book Machine, Fawcett, George Orwell, Hachette, Jason Epstein, Jeff Bezos, Leonard Shazkin, Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Pietsch, NY Review of Books, Penguin, Philip Van Doren Stern, Random House, Sid Gross Doubleday Bookshops, Viking

Ebooks are making me recall the history of mass-market publishing

March 13, 2011 by Mike Shatzkin 59 Comments

The ebook revolution is really beginning to remind me of the mass-market papeback revolution. The mass paperback was really “invented” by Sir Allan Lane when he created Penguin in Britain before World War II. (Wikipedia credits a German publisher with the first cheap paperbacks a few years earlier, but Lane was certainly the first in […]

Filed Under: Authors, Autobiographical, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing, Publishing History, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Anchor Books, Avon, Ballantine, Bantam, Bill Shinker, Brentano's Bookstore, Doubleday, Doubleday Book Stores, Hachette, HarperCollins, It's A Wonderful Life, Jason Epstein, Leonard Shatzkin, Little Brown, Louis L'Amour, Macmillan, Penguin, Peter Mayer, Philip Van Doren Stern, Pocket Books, Random House, Scribner's Bookstore, Sid Gross, Signet, Sir Allan Lane, Sport Magazine, Viking, Warner Books

A new perspective on some old family publishing history

May 10, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 4 Comments

After Making Information Pay on Thursday, I had lunch with Michael Cader. One of our topics was some statistical research he is doing on the question “how many orphans”? This is his research to reveal, but I will only tell you “not nearly as many as I thought.” Part of what I learned from Michael […]

Filed Under: Autobiographical, General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Anchor Books, Collier Books, Dolphin Books, Jason Epstein, Leonard Shatzkin, Louis Untermeyer, Robert Graves, St. Martin's, Tom McCormack

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.

Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeShatzkin.

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