The Book Industry Study Group, or BISG, is a book publishing trade organization now headed by Brian O’Leary that was formed to be pan-industry. They were preceded by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the American Booksellers Association (ABA), but those were two “sides” of the book trade with their own interests, and they […]
New data on the Long Tail impact suggests rethinking history and ideas about the future of publishing
For most of my lifetime, the principal challenge a publisher faced to get a book noticed by a consumer and sold was to get it on the shelves in bookstores. Data was always scarce (I combed for it for years) but everything I ever saw reported confirmed that customers generally chose from what was made […]
Innovators and circumstances: the Frankfurt Publishers Launch show
In some ways, I think this year’s Publishers Launch Frankfurt show kicks off the next era of digital change in global publishing. The US and other English-speaking markets have established clearly that immersive reading — fiction and narrative non-fiction — is easily ported to screens for most people. In the past 18 months, changes in […]
Two anomalies on my desk this morning
While the AAP reports that US book sales are definitely down and my friends in major houses report a decline of 10% or more across the board, that’s not what we’re hearing from Canada and it’s not what we hard from small and midsize publishers responding to our BISG “Shifting Sales Channels” survey. BookNet Canada […]
Riffing on Tamblyn’s “6 Things”, Part 1
Michael Tamblyn, the smart and dynamic leader of Booknet Canada who has performed minor miracles with the Canadian supply chain, gave a talk at his company’s tech forum a fortnight ago that has gotten a lot of deserved attention. It’s 30 minutes long, but it flies by and the presentation is great fun: very much […]