We’ve previously explored what I called “the end of the trade publishing concept”, which stems from the now wide-open opportunity to publish available to anybody with a computer and something to deliver as a book. It feels like we may have reached a new benchmark: admittedly a very fuzzy one. But it looks like it […]
Two pretty easy ways to add revenue that most publishers are missing
The biggest publishers today are regularly delivering improved profit performance on a flat or declining sales base. This masks a troubling truth about today’s book business. The core asset base of a book publisher is “performing titles”: the books that are delivering measurable revenues. The more of them there are the healthier the business is. […]
New data on the Long Tail impact suggests rethinking history and ideas about the future of publishing
For most of my lifetime, the principal challenge a publisher faced to get a book noticed by a consumer and sold was to get it on the shelves in bookstores. Data was always scarce (I combed for it for years) but everything I ever saw reported confirmed that customers generally chose from what was made […]
Planning the next publishing model: a new take on “no returns”
Although there are some very good minds working on the next publishing model — Jane Friedman with Open Road and Richard Nash with Cursor being the first two that leap to mind — I have developed a couple of thoughts that might be helpful to them or to others planning to avail themselves of the […]
The Future of Books for Publishers and Booksellers
There is a big picture and a long arc within which our day-to-day activities are taking place. The 20th century consumer media were horizontal in their subject matter — that is, very broad — and format-specific. In the States, that means entities like CBS or NBC in television, The New York Times, or Random House. All of these companies provide content across the full range of human subject interests, but they pretty much stick to their formats: broadcast, newspapers, and books, respectively