Here’s a modest proposal about how marketers at big publishers should be organized. By audience segment, or, to use my own favored terminology, by vertical. Marketing demands it and entirely new business opportunities — beyond publishing — can arise from it. A publisher — even the most general publisher — should figure out which audiences […]
Business models are changing; trial and error will ensue
The announcement late last week that Random House is starting three digital-first imprints was just the most recent example showing that publishers are exploring new business models. Just days earlier we got news of the partnership between Simon & Schuster and Author Solutions making S&S the third major publisher — preceded by Christian publishing titan Thomas Nelson […]
Publishers adding value on the marketing side
Obviously my day job, consulting, informs a lot of what goes into The Shatzkin Files. I guess it is just as obvious that I can’t quote everybody who tells me something or attribute everything I want to write about to a specific company or individual. I don’t make a living writing this blog and I […]
Which flies the coop first? the chicken or the egg?
There are lessons that can be taught or learned in one segment of publishing that can then apply to another. Well over a decade ago, Mark Bide and I were discussing the business model for journals. The way it works is that the university pays the professors a salary and rewards them with promotions and […]
Upstream and downstream developments crowd publishers’ space
I had breakfast last summer with one of the titans of 20th century publishing who is now in his senior years running his own smaller operation. He’s a notorious non-techie. When we talked, he was trying to come to grips with what the problem for publishers was with this digital transition. From his perspective, publishing […]