I met Jim Haynes at the first Frankfurt Book Fair I attended, in 1976. I would see him every year when I went back to Frankfurt and any other time I was in Paris, where Jim lived. I think I was one of his ten or fifteen thousand closest friends. Jim’s recent passing in his […]
Conferences are thermometers recording the level of fear about publishing changes
In the latest sign that the need for information about digital change in publishing has undergone a sea change in the past few years, it was announced today that Nielsen will not stage an independent conference in London this April, but will instead join forces with the London Book Fair to do an event there […]
It is being proven that smaller bookstores can work commercially
Sometimes it takes a decade or more for an insight to be validated, but it is always nice when it happens. Around the turn of the century, I was developing a business called “Supply Chain Tracker”, which had a nice client base for a few years. What we did was take the data feeds — […]
The Digital Book World program this year covers the waterfront of the digital transition for book publishing
(This is a longer-than-usual Shatzkin Files post reviewing the topics and speakers for the 26 breakout sessions at DBW 2015. It serves as a checklist of “things to think about right now” for book publishers living through the experience of digital change. The entire program is here. We decided not to link to each and every […]
Frankfurt is still vast, but it seems to be getting smaller
I’ve spent more than half-a-year of my life in Frankfurt, one week at a time. My first Fair was 1976 so this would have been my 39th if I attended them all. I think I missed two, so that’s 37. I love it and I get enormous commercial benefit from it. I can’t understand people […]