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The written word is losing its power and will continue to

February 21, 2018 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

If there were a futures market in literacy, it would be dropping. It is a sad fact that the value of written words, in relation to spoken words and still and moving pictures, is sinking like a stone. Changes like this happen for structural reasons. Since the invention of moveable type and the printing press, […]

Filed Under: Autobiographical, eBooks, New Models, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Technology Tagged With: Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times, ten thousand hours

Amazon channels Orwell in its latest blast

August 9, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 243 Comments

Anybody who reads Amazon’s latest volley in the Amazon-Hachette war and then David Streitfeld’s takedown of it on the New York Times’s web site will know that Amazon — either deliberately or with striking ignorance — distorted a George Orwell quote to make it appear that he was against low-priced paperbacks when he was actually […]

Filed Under: Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, New Models, Publishing History, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain Tagged With: 1984, Amazon, Anchor Books, Ballantine, Brentano's, David Streitfeld, Doubleday, Douglas Preston, Espresso Book Machine, Fawcett, George Orwell, Hachette, Jason Epstein, Jeff Bezos, Leonard Shazkin, Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Pietsch, NY Review of Books, Penguin, Philip Van Doren Stern, Random House, Sid Gross Doubleday Bookshops, Viking

All the Amazon-Hachette coverage doesn’t seem to cover some important causes and implications

June 3, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 132 Comments

A great deal has been written in many venues about the current tussle between dominant Internet retailer Amazon and one of the three smallest of book publishing’s Big Five general trade houses, Hachette Book Group. Although neither side has been particularly explicit about the precise points of contention, both what I read and what I […]

Filed Under: Authors, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, New Models, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon, Apple, B&N, Baker & Taylor, Books-a-Million, Borders, Charlie Stross, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Hastings, Ingram, iPad, James Patterson, John Green, Kindle, Macmillan, Malcolm Gladwell, Michael J. Sullivan, Nook, Simon & Schuster, Walmart, Zola

Inevitable consequences follow from the new hierarchy of power among publishers

May 21, 2014 by Mike Shatzkin 10 Comments

The current very public battle over trading terms taking place between Hachette Book Group and Amazon has brought forth surprisingly few recollections by those reporting it (an exception here) of a similar fight last summer between Simon & Schuster and Barnes & Noble. This is publishing’s near-term future. The two most powerful channels that deliver books […]

Filed Under: Authors, General Trade Publishing, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bonniers, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, James Patterson, Macmillan, Madeline McIntosh, Malcolm Gladwell, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster

Malcolm Gladwell, please meet John Wooden

July 9, 2009 by Mike Shatzkin 10 Comments

The sui generis Malcolm Gladwell wrote a provocative piece in the May 11 New Yorker, “How David Beats Goliath”, that demonstrates that the underdog can often win by adopting an unconventional strategy. The examples were numerous, and included Lawrence of Arabia, but the central point-maker was a girls basketball team. Their coach, an Iranian national […]

Filed Under: Autobiographical, Chuckles Tagged With: John Wooden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lew Alcindor, Malcolm Gladwell, Rick Pitino, UCLA

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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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