Amazon dropped a shoe last week when they announced their new mystery imprint, Thomas & Mercer Books, and started signing authors, including self-publishing evangelist, Joe Konrath. Last night they dropped the other shoe, which turned out to be a very heavy boot. They signed former Time Warner Publishing (the company that is now Hachette Book […]
The tipping has really already started
The idea of an “Ebook Tipping Point” panel for Digital Book World arose when I wrote a blogpost last August https://idealog.com/blog/ebook-growth-explosive-serious-disruptions-around-the-corner on the occasion of the regular monthly release of the IDPF’s ebook sales figures. It was clear then that very substantial percentages of the sale of new narrative fiction and non-fiction were going to […]
A coming new obsession: how to handle a smaller print-book business
Here’s a prediction that has almost no chance of being wrong. Every major player in the trade book industry is about to develop a new obsession: how must our business model change when we reach a level of ebook sales that is dynamically disruptive to the print book ecosystem? This might not be exactly a […]
Talking to the agents, and introducing Filedby
I was flattered to be asked to speak to the AAR last night as part of a very distinguished group. My fellow panelists were John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan; Morgan Entrekin, the CEO of Atlantic Monthly Press; the agent Larry Kirshbaum, who was CEO of TimeWarner’s book division (now Hachette Book Group); and Susan Katz, the […]