Open Road Integrated Media has been an active client for the past couple of years. I have been intrigued by their claim of having the only really automated ebook marketing system in existence. I can’t say I have the inside knowledge of every other big player’s operations to confirm that is true, but it certainly […]
Market research used to be a silly idea for publishers but it is not anymore
When my father, Leonard Shatzkin, was appointed Director of Research at Doubleday in the 1950s, it was a deliberate attempt to give him license to use analytical techniques to affect how business was done across the company. He had started out heading up manufacturing, with a real focus on streamlining the number of trim sizes […]
Starter thoughts for publishers to develop new author marketing policies
In a prior post, we suggested that the time has come for publishers to have clear policies around what they should require from author web presences for an effective publishing partnership. This is a really complex and multi-faceted challenge for every publisher. The purpose of this post is to discuss that proposition in more detail, […]
No author website rules of the road in publishing contracts is a big fail for the industry
The topic of author websites and what the relationship between publishers and authors around them should be is a big “fail” for the publishing industry at the moment. Nobody seems to have thought this through. Publisher policies are all over the lot, even within houses, and that demonstrates that agents haven’t figured out what policies and […]
Marketing will replace editorial as the driving force behind publishing houses
One of the things my father, Leonard Shatzkin, taught me when I was first learning about book publishing a half-century ago was that “all publishing houses are started with an editorial inspiration”. What he meant by that is that what motivated somebody to start a book publisher was an idea about what to publish. That […]