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Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be

February 6, 2023 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

The idea that general trade publishing and general trade publishing houses were going to have to change or die was first floated here in a post in 2007 and then expanded upon in a post called “The End of the General Trade Publishing Concept” in 2019. The announcement this week that Madeline McIntosh, a very […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Barnes & Noble, Big Five, David Wilk, Hachette, HarperCollins, James Daunt, Macmillan, Madeline McIntosh, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster

What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business

November 1, 2022 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

Judge Florence Y. Pan ruled today that the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House could not go forward. The ruling was explicitly to protect the “competition” for the “anticipated top-selling books”. In other words, the big books by big authors for which only the Big Five can compete regularly (with occasional bids […]

Filed Under: Atomization, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Uncategorized Tagged With: Big Five, Hachette, HarperCollins, Ingram, Penguin Random House, PRH, S&S, Simon & Schuster

Doubts about the Department of Justice’s objection to the PRH acquisition of S&S

November 16, 2021 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

There are, at this moment, still five US commercial book publishers of mega-size. Penguin Random House is the biggest; HarperCollins is 2nd; and Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster round out the Big Five. PRH is, approximately, as big as the other four combined (about $4 billion in sales) and HarperCollins is, approximately, as big […]

Filed Under: Authors, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Binyamin Appelbaum, Costco, Hachette, HarperCollins, Ingram, Lightning Print, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Print-On-Demand, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press, Tom McCormack, Walmart

The end of the general trade publishing concept

October 19, 2020 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

My brilliant friend Joe Esposito has written a piece to explain why Penguin Random House would want to acquire Simon & Schuster.  I have also been thinking about why PRH, or any of the other three of the “Big Five”, would want to acquire S&S. In fact, two of the three, Hachette and HarperCollins, have […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Print-On-Demand, Publishing, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: Big Five, Dan Gerstein, Gotham Publishing Solutions, Hachette, HarperCollins, Howtopublishbooks.com, Ingram, IngramSpark, Joe Esposito, John Sargent, Julie Blattberg, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, PRH, Robin Cutler, Simon & Schuster, Tom McCormack

Imprint consolidation at big houses is a sign of changed times

October 25, 2018 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

I had reason to learn recently that Ingram has 16 million individual titles loaded in their Lightning Source database ready to be delivered as a bound book to you within 24 hours, if not sooner. So every book coming into the world today is competing against 16 million other books that you might buy. That […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Marketing, New Models, Scale, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: "Little Random", Amazon, Atria, Cato Institute, CreateSpace, Crown, Gallery, Ingram Spark, Kindle, Lightning Source, Macmillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin's Press, Tom McCormack, Touchstone

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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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Recent Posts

  • Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
  • Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!
  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author
  • What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business
  • “Automated ebook marketing by Open Road; can anybody else do it?”

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  • Running a big publishing house is not as much fun as it used to be
  • Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!
  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author

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