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How book publishing has changed in recent decades and the puzzling question of what comes next

June 19, 2022 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

My book business career (on the fringes since 1958 and pretty fully immersed since 1973) has been spent considering the path from “intellectual property creator” to “book purchaser”. This is a world occupied by authors and packagers and agents; by publishers of various sizes and capabilities coordinating the many tasks and steps from the raw […]

Filed Under: Atomization, Authors, General Trade Publishing, Global, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Uncategorized Tagged With: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, bookstore sales, direct-to-consumer marketing of books, Ingram Content Companies, Ingram Spark, Kindle, online sales

“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

One big change in book publishing is that it does not require you to have much of an organization to play anymore

September 30, 2019 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

More than two decades into its digital transition, book publishing has evolved so that a capital-intensive infrastructure is no longer a requirement to successfully develop a book, or a list of books, and bring the books to market. This has resulted in a self-publishing segment, so far almost entirely author-driven, that is substantial in reach […]

Filed Under: Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon.com, Apple, Audible, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Costco, eBooks, Google, iBookstore, Indigo, Ingram, Ingram Spark, iPad, Kindle, KindleUnlimited, Kobo, Nook, Sony Reader, Walmart

After seeing Lightning Australia and a couple of publishers, and learning a few things

January 23, 2019 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

Ingram’s Lightning Print operation outside of Melbourne isn’t massive (at least not yet), but it sure has a lot of capabilities. It can deliver hardbacks as well as paperbacks, color as well as just black, and pretty much an infinite number of trim sizes. It’s built for true POD, meaning runs of one copy, but […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Global, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Uncategorized Tagged With: Booktopia, Ingram, Ingram Spark, Lighting Print, Lightning Source, Tony Nash

Imprint consolidation at big houses is a sign of changed times

October 25, 2018 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

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 […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Scale, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: "Little Random", Amazon, Atria, Cato Institute, CreateSpace, Crown, Gallery, Ingram Spark, Kindle, Lightning Source, Macmillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press, Tom McCormack, Touchstone

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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

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  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author
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  • “Automated ebook marketing by Open Road; can anybody else do it?”
  • How book publishing has changed in recent decades and the puzzling question of what comes next

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