The planning process for the main Digital Book World program — about 40 discrete programming elements using about 150 speakers over two days — has always benefited from a “Conference Council” brainstorming meeting. This year’s iteration is later this week. We’ll have attendees from all of the Big Five, several other publishers, agents, and assorted […]
Four of the big five have new deals with Amazon and only the biggest is still to negotiate one
A reporter called earlier this week focused on what he figures are the upcoming negotiations over trading terms between Amazon and Penguin Random House. I had observed when Amazon was throwing sharp elbows at Hachette during their contractual dispute that Amazon wouldn’t try similar tactics with PRH. Since then, with HarperCollins and Amazon having announced […]
Frankfurt is still vast, but it seems to be getting smaller
I’ve spent more than half-a-year of my life in Frankfurt, one week at a time. My first Fair was 1976 so this would have been my 39th if I attended them all. I think I missed two, so that’s 37. I love it and I get enormous commercial benefit from it. I can’t understand people […]
We got lucky with the speakers we booked for Publishers Launch Frankfurt
Branch Rickey, the fabled baseball executive who gave us racial integration, farm systems, and a host of great teams over fifty years, used to say “luck is the residue of design”. I’d like to think he was right, because we have really been lucky with our Frankfurt show for Publishers Launch, which we present in […]
The future of books in stores
The future for books in retail stores is not unified; it’s dispersed. To the extent that there continue to be bookstores (and although shelf space in them will continue to decline inexorably, they’ll also be around for years to come), the bookstores will increasingly be more about books for reading and less about books for […]