I wrote about piracy in my prior post and suggested that I had some ideas. These are those. Brian Napack will be presenting Macmillan’s Seven Point Program for fighting piracy at Digital Book World. Today I want to expose The Shatzkin Files THREE Point Program for doing the same. I don’t know whether my three points will […]
Some thoughts about piracy
As part of the program-creation process for Digital Book World, I had a round of conversations with the top executives of the Big Six companies to discuss the agenda, mostly with the CEOs. The purpose of the check-ins was to find out what topics the CEOs wanted their companies to speak about and, of course, […]
Can the chains provide us with better small bookstores?
There is considerable concern among the trade publishing establishment about the future of brick-and-mortar stores. As well there should be. Retail stores provide the most efficient promotion opportunities for books: putting them in front of people poised to buy. They give clear signals about sales appeal by positioning and piles of stock of varying sizes; […]
When the entry level employee knows more than the manager
Here’s how we’ve been putting together the program for Digital Book World. First, I dreamed up a list of panel “topics” that I thought touched the key issues and concerns facing general trade publishers today as a result of digital change. Then we ran that list past our illustrious and helpful Board of Advisors, who […]
The coming publishing portfolio reshuffle
As the reality of the shrinking marketing opportunities for general trade books and the continuing verticalization of audiences through the Internet takes hold, we can expect to see some unusual changes (by historical standards) in trade publishing over the next few years. It seems inevitable that retail shelf space for books is going to be […]