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Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be

February 6, 2023 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

The idea that general trade publishing and general trade publishing houses were going to have to change or die was first floated here in a post in 2007 and then expanded upon in a post called “The End of the General Trade Publishing Concept” in 2019. The announcement this week that Madeline McIntosh, a very […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Barnes & Noble, Big Five, David Wilk, Hachette, HarperCollins, James Daunt, Macmillan, Madeline McIntosh, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster

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

November 1, 2022 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

Judge Florence Y. Pan ruled today that the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House could not go forward. The ruling was explicitly to protect the “competition” for the “anticipated top-selling books”. In other words, the big books by big authors for which only the Big Five can compete regularly (with occasional bids […]

Filed Under: Atomization, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Uncategorized Tagged With: Big Five, Hachette, HarperCollins, Ingram, Penguin Random House, PRH, S&S, Simon & Schuster

Doubts about the Department of Justice’s objection to the PRH acquisition of S&S

November 16, 2021 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

There are, at this moment, still five US commercial book publishers of mega-size. Penguin Random House is the biggest; HarperCollins is 2nd; and Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster round out the Big Five. PRH is, approximately, as big as the other four combined (about $4 billion in sales) and HarperCollins is, approximately, as big […]

Filed Under: Authors, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Binyamin Appelbaum, Costco, Hachette, HarperCollins, Ingram, Lightning Print, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Print-On-Demand, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press, Tom McCormack, Walmart

“The Family Business” is Ingram: the global infrastructure for the book industry

April 19, 2021 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

The global infrastructure for the book business that is not Amazon is owned and operated by the Ingram Content Group. In fact, a lot of the global infrastructure of the book business that is identified as Amazon is actually Ingram. And on top of that, there would probably have been no Amazon, certainly not the […]

Filed Under: Autobiographical, General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing History, Scale, Supply-Chain, Technology Tagged With: "Behemoth: Amazon Rising" by Robin Gaster, "Book Wars" by John B. Thompson, "The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know" by Mike Shatzkin and Robert Paris Riger, Bronson Ingram, Bruce Harris, Coresource, HarperCollins, Harry Hoffman, Ingram Content Group, Ingram Spark, Jack Stambaugh, John Ingram, Karl Weber, Keel Hunt, Lightning Print, Michael Zibart, Penguin Random House, Tennessee Book Company, Tennessee School Book Depository, Vanderbilt business school

The end of the general trade publishing concept

October 19, 2020 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

My brilliant friend Joe Esposito has written a piece to explain why Penguin Random House would want to acquire Simon & Schuster.  I have also been thinking about why PRH, or any of the other three of the “Big Five”, would want to acquire S&S. In fact, two of the three, Hachette and HarperCollins, have […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: Big Five, Dan Gerstein, Gotham Publishing Solutions, Hachette, HarperCollins, Howtopublishbooks.com, Ingram, IngramSpark, Joe Esposito, John Sargent, Julie Blattberg, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, PRH, Robin Cutler, Simon & Schuster, Tom McCormack

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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

  • Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
  • 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?”

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  • Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
  • 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

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