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Subscription services for ebooks progress to becoming a real experiment

May 27, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 16 Comments

My long-held conviction that broad-based subscriptions for ebooks were not likely to work is partly based on facts that are now changing. It is still by no means a slam dunk that ebooks must go where Spotify has taken digital music and Netflix has taken the digital distribution of TV and movies, but it looks […]

Filed Under: Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, New Models, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: 24Symbols, Amazon, Amazon Prime, Big Five, Book-of-the-Month Club, Carolyn Reidy, Evan Schnittman, Hachette, HarperCollins, Kindle Owners Lending Library, Macmillan, Netflix, Oyster, Penguin Random House, PRH, S&S, Safari, Scribd, Simon & Schuster, Spotify

It is not news to publishers that they have to engage directly with their readers

March 18, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 40 Comments

Since the merger that has created Penguin Random House, there has been precious little speculation (except by me, as far as I can tell) about what this new behemoth in trade book publishing could do to exploit their scale in new and innovative ways. Their scale advantage is huge. PRH has something in the neighborhood […]

Filed Under: Direct response, General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: 250 Words, Big Five, Book-of-the-Month Club, Bookmarks, Farrar Straus, Hannah Telfer, Holt, Joe Esposito, Literary Guild, Macmillan, Markus Dohle, Osprey, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's, The Bookseller, Thomas & Mercer, Thomas Dunne Books, Tom Weldon, Tor, Tor.com

Peering into the future and seeing more value in the Random Penguin merger

November 26, 2012 by Jess 30 Comments

So now in addition to the Random House and Penguin merger that is being reviewed by governments far and wide, we have the news that HarperCollins is exploring a tie-up with Simon & Schuster in a deal that hasn’t been made yet. That leaves Hachette and Macmillan, among the so-called Big Six, still on the […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing History, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: Amazon, Ballantine, Barnes & Noble, Book-of-the-Month Club, Dell, Doubleday, Fawcett, Hachette, HarperCollins, Laura Owen, Literary Guild, Macmillan, PaidContent, Penguin, Putnam-Berkley, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Sterling, Thomas Nelson, Viking, Zondervan

Subscription models seem to me to be for ebook niches, not a general offer

July 16, 2012 by Jess 32 Comments

Another fledgling ebook retailing venture came through our office this month touting a subscription proposition. I told the entrepeneur “I’m skeptical of the subscription model for ebooks,” and he said, “I know”. We had a great chat, but I’m still skeptical. When I say that, I mean I’m skeptical that a general offering subscription model […]

Filed Under: Direct response, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing History, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: Angry Robot, Audible, Baen Books, Book-of-the-Month Club, continuity series, Discover a New Love, Disney Digital Books, Dzanc, F+W Media, Harlequin, iTunes, Literary Guild, Netflix, O'Reilly, Osprey, Pearson, Recorded Books, Safari, Sesame Street eBooks, Sourcebooks, Spotify, TED conferences, The Atavist, Time-Life Books

My advice is not always easy to follow, but sometimes it proves right anyway

March 29, 2010 by Mike Shatzkin 21 Comments

I was interviewed a couple of weeks ago by a journalist who was working on a story about publishers and digital change. He was building something around my “Stay Ahead of the Shift” speech from last year’s Book Expo. “I was impressed by that speech,” he said. “You were very prescriptive about what publishers should do. So […]

Filed Under: eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Publishing, Publishing History, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: Bertelsmann, Book-of-the-Month Club, Cookstr, F+W Media, HarperCollins, Harvard Common Press, Hay House, Random House, Serious Eats

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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

  • 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?”
  • How book publishing has changed in recent decades and the puzzling question of what comes next

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  • What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business

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