The most important question in the world of trade publishing is “what will happen to the book trade”, meaning, primarily, the bookstores (but also the other retailers that sell books, the libraries and the wholesalers that supply them). That was the topic of a panel called “The Power of Retail” at BEA in New York […]
The dominance of Amazon needs to be addressed but it is far more attributable to natural circumstances than it is anybody’s fault
As things evolve in an era of rapid change, it is human nature to assign credit or blame for any drastic alterations in circumstances. And so we have the book business, with its last remaining chain store behemoth, Barnes & Noble, in a period of obvious decline and presenting the clear possibility that the book […]
Learning some things at ABA’s Winter Institute
The American Booksellers Association held their seventh annual “Winter Institute” in New Orleans this year, and it took place last week. When I had a meeting at Frankfurt in October with the ABA’s Chief Executive Officer, Oren Teicher, to recruit him to speak at Digital Book World 2012 (which he will do this coming week), […]
Show me the data!
One thing we try to do at Digital Book World is to present our audiences with useful, relevant, and, when we can, original data. It is a familiar complaint in our industry that we drive blind. Part of that is due to the sheer diversity and granularity of the “book business”. And another part is […]