I sometimes feel like I’m the only guy in town (NYC, but I’d include London too) contemplating out loud how Penguin Random House might use its position as by far the biggest commercial trade publisher to make life a bit more difficult for its competitors, which in the first instance means the Following Four: HarperCollins […]
Some ideas for publishers that will help bookstores; other suggestions that make us skeptical
This is the fourth of a series of posts on bookstores and their future. The previous posts have covered the challenges of buying (proposing VMI as a possible solution), explored what we should expect for the future of Barnes & Noble, and envisioned what the world of brick-and-mortar book retail might look like in the […]
More thoughts about the future of bookstores, triggered by Barnes & Noble’s own predictions for itself
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published a story by Jeffrey Trachtenberg quoting Barnes & Noble’s retail group CEO Mitch Klipper on the company’s plans for shrinking its store footprint over the next decade. Klipper suggested only a gentle acceleration of what has been the pace of contraction for the past couple of years far […]
A debate across panels is coming at our London show on June 21
It looks like we’re going to have a bit of an unintended debate stretching across several of our panels at the Publishers Launch show in London. Since I’m the guy who put the show together, I can speak with authority to the fact that it was really unintended. But I consider it serendipitous and proof […]
Are open markets for ebooks a race to the bottom on price? Maybe our London show will help me understand
Sometimes something seems very obvious to me, but other people — smart people I respect — don’t see it that way and it makes me wonder if I’m missing something. What I’m thinking about that way today is the future of “open territories” in the ebook world. When English-language rights are sold to US and […]