As things evolve in an era of rapid change, it is human nature to assign credit or blame for any drastic alterations in circumstances. And so we have the book business, with its last remaining chain store behemoth, Barnes & Noble, in a period of obvious decline and presenting the clear possibility that the book […]
Lots of Spanish speakers in the United States, but not so much of a book market for Spanish books
Somebody somewhere reported last month that the United States is the home country to the second largest number of Spanish-speakers in the world, after Mexico. Since I am speaking in Madrid to Spanish publishers at the end of May, that seemed like something I should learn more about. The US must be a market. The […]
Special People and Book Publishing
It is a safe contention that few people whose primary career motivation is “to get rich” go into book publishing. What attracts folks to our business are other life objectives. Over the six decades I’ve been interacting with publishing professionals, I have come to see that reality as a feature, not a bug. It is […]
Ten Years Ago Amazon Started A Revolution and It Just Gave Me a Very Good Month
Ten years ago, Amazon released the first Kindle device. There had been electronic book reading devices before the Kindle and, indeed, the Sony ereader was actively in the market when Kindle arrived. (Others, like Rocketbook and Softbook, had perished for lack of interest.) Kindle and Amazon succeeded where others failed for several reasons. First and […]
Amazon and the future of physical retail
There are two parallel conversations about the future of retail that are quite active. One is within the book business and it centers around what the future will be — and will there be one? — for Barnes & Noble. The other one is about the future of retail competitors to Amazon in the broader […]
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