The financial reports of the major publishers have been following a pattern for some years now. Sales are about flat but profits have been steadily rising. One explanation for that fact is that the management of the major houses have been diligent about adapting their businesses to the new marketplace configurations or, as the saying […]
Imprint consolidation at big houses is a sign of changed times
I had reason to learn recently that Ingram has 16 million individual titles loaded in their Lightning Source database ready to be delivered as a bound book to you within 24 hours, if not sooner. So every book coming into the world today is competing against 16 million other books that you might buy. That […]
Medium publishes a book and gets some big PR
The New York Times carried a story on the front page of its Friday Business section about a book. This book is a novel entitled (appropriately for this piece) “The Big Disruption” by Jessica Powell. Of course, it is about Silicon Valley, which explains its positioning and why Times columist Farhad Manjoo was interested enough […]
A changing book business: it all seems to be flowing downhill to Amazon
Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle in 2007 was followed rapidly by other ebook systems — Kobo, Google, B&N’s Nook, and Apple’s iBook — and widely-available print-on-demand capabilities for printed books offered by Ingram (Lightning Print was already a decade old) and Amazon’s CreateSpace. Amazon had long exploited price as a weapon in the marketplace, discounting […]
The “Big Change” era in trade book publishing ended about four years ago
Book publishing is still very much in a time of changing conditions and circumstances. There are a host of unknowables about the next several years that affect the shape of the industry and the strategies of all the players in it. But as publishers, retailers, libraries, and their ecosystem partners prepare for whatever is next, […]