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2020: Zero year thoughts about the changes in book publishing

January 7, 2020 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

Years that end in zeroes summon a natural tendency to look backwards and forwards. So as we enter this century’s decade of The 20s, we’ll do just that. The ideas in this piece analyze what is mostly anecdata: “facts” that are real, that I’ve vetted with people who have lived through these times with me, […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Global, Marketing, New Models, Publishing, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: "The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know", 2020, Barnes & Noble, Books in Print, Borders, Dalton, decades and centuries and zero years, In Cold Type, Ingram, Leonard Shatzkin, Lightning Print, Lightning Source, Robert Paris Riger, Robert Riger, St. Martin's Press, Thomas McCormack, Walden

Deep in the weeds of publishing economics

March 1, 2017 by Mike Shatzkin 31 Comments

This is a geeky post about publishing economics. Some people like that. If you don’t, you were warned before you invested any time. Two otherwise unrelated projects last week — a book I’m working on with a veteran fellow consultant named Robert Riger and a quick consulting call with a team from a major generalist […]

Filed Under: Authors, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: "The Mathematics of Bookselling", Amazon, Dolphin Books, Doubleday, In Cold Type, Len Shatzkin, Macmillan, Robert Riger, St. Martin's Press, Title P&Ls, Tom McCormack, Unit cost accounting

Seven key insights about VMI for books and why it is becoming a current concern

April 6, 2015 by Mike Shatzkin 2 Comments

Vendor-managed inventory (VMI) is a supply paradigm for retailers by which the distributor makes the individual stocking decisions rather than having them determined by “orders” from an account. The most significant application of it for books was in the mass-market paperback business in its early days, when most of the books went through the magazine […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing History, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: Above the Treeline, Baker & Taylor, Doubleday, Doubleday Merchandising Plan, In Cold Type, Ingram, Leonard Shatzkin, VMI

What I Would Have Said in London, Part 1

April 25, 2010 by Mike Shatzkin 11 Comments

I have gotten some requests, in comments and off-the-blog, to write what I was going to say to the AGM of the PA in an appearance I was supposed to make there on Wednesday, April 28. I felt terrible about having to cancel an engagement that was booked many months ago but it was tied into a […]

Filed Under: eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Industry Events, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon, America Online, Bantam, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Cambridge University Press, Compuserve, Craig's List, Crown Publishing, Google, In Cold Type, iPod, iTunes, Len Shatzkin, London Book Fair, Princess Daisy, Prodigy, Sony Walkman, Yahoo

Why Dad’s book had a disclaimer from the publisher

March 14, 2010 by Mike Shatzkin 4 Comments

Only a short post on a rainy Sunday, a little folksier than usual. But I did think of something sort-of analytical at the end. But when I write about my Dad, nice things happen. Last week I got this link sent to me by a friend in London, reminding me of the disclaimer in In Cold Type. […]

Filed Under: Autobiographical, General Trade Publishing, Publishing, Publishing History Tagged With: David Replogle, Houghton Mifflin, In Cold Type, Leonard Shatzkin, Lightning Print

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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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