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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

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

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.

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Recent Posts

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  • When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author
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