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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

2020: Zero year thoughts about the changes in book publishing

January 7, 2020 by Mike Shatzkin Leave a Comment

Years that end in zeroes summon a natural tendency to look backwards and forwards. So as we enter this century’s decade of The 20s, we’ll do just that. The ideas in this piece analyze what is mostly anecdata: “facts” that are real, that I’ve vetted with people who have lived through these times with me, […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Global, Marketing, New Models, Publishing, Publishing History, Scale, Self-Publishing, Supply-Chain, Vertical Tagged With: "The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know", 2020, Barnes & Noble, Books in Print, Borders, Dalton, decades and centuries and zero years, In Cold Type, Ingram, Leonard Shatzkin, Lightning Print, Lightning Source, Robert Paris Riger, Robert Riger, St. Martin's Press, Thomas McCormack, Walden

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

Deep in the weeds of publishing economics

March 1, 2017 by Mike Shatzkin 31 Comments

This is a geeky post about publishing economics. Some people like that. If you don’t, you were warned before you invested any time. Two otherwise unrelated projects last week — a book I’m working on with a veteran fellow consultant named Robert Riger and a quick consulting call with a team from a major generalist […]

Filed Under: Authors, General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: "The Mathematics of Bookselling", Amazon, Dolphin Books, Doubleday, In Cold Type, Len Shatzkin, Macmillan, Robert Riger, St. Martin's Press, Title P&Ls, Tom McCormack, Unit cost accounting

The reality of publishing economics has changed for the big players

September 19, 2016 by Mike Shatzkin 28 Comments

A veteran agent who was formerly a publisher confirmed a point for me about how trade publishing has changed over the past two decades, particularly for the big houses. This challenges a fundamental tenet of my father’s understanding of the business. (And that’s the still the source of most of mine.) I had long suspected […]

Filed Under: General Trade Publishing, Licensing and Rights, Marketing, New Models, Publishing History, Scale, Supply-Chain Tagged With: Amazon, B. Dalton, Barnes & Noble, Hillary Clinton for President, Leonard Shatzkin, Publishing People for Hillary, Roy Campanella, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Cory Booker, St. Martin's Press, Tom McCormack, Walden, Yogi Berra

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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.

Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeShatzkin.

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Recent Posts

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  • 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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