Pearson Education

In the ever-changing world of multimedia and shoppers who expect things at the click of the mouse, e-commerce solutions are in high demand. “These days it’s so important to give your Web customers a great experience,” says Jim Morse, president of Morse Data Corp. To do so, it is important to select solutions that fit your company size, scope, staff and budget. The following advice from several e-commerce solution providers can help guide you through the process of deciding which product works best for your company. “A publisher should analyze the cost of not only the development of a solution, but the manpower

Google’s controversial campaign to scan and digitalize library collections for online viewing on its Internet search engine continues to raise objections and claims of piracy from the publishing world. According to the Agence France-Presse news agency, another publishing group--this time French publisher La Martiniere--filed suit Tuesday against the Internet giant for indexing the company’s titles without first obtaining permission. La Martiniere, owner of France’s Le Seuil, Switzerland’s Delachaux and Niestle, and the United States’ Harry N. Abrams, contends that even if the company is only showing portions of a work online, it still constitutes an infringement of copyright. More than 100 La Martiniere books have

Len Kain, vice president of marketing, Dogfriendly.com, knows firsthand how much of a gamble fulfillment can be in the book business. While he’s figured out a system for just the right level of inventory, he concedes it can be a roll of the dice. As a small publisher, he’s learned to play the game of fulfillment and returns to his best advantage—to reduce losses and increase gains. For him, as for larger publishers and also distributors, developing efficient warehouse fulfillment and return procedures can involve a healthy run of trial and error. So what is working and what isn’t? Book Business interviewed two

The New York Book Show, which awards quality in the design, graphics, production, printing and binding of books, is considered by many people in the industry to be one of the most prestigious events on the annual book-publishing calendar. The Bookbinders’ Guild of New York staged the annual event—which is celebrating its 20th year—March 20th at Café St. Barts on Park Avenue in New York City, and this year, unlike the previous few, it didn’t even snow. A great white tent covering the outdoor terrace, which serves as an outdoor cafe when the weather is warmer, greeted those who attended the show. On

As professors begin creating their course plan for the year, often they’ll select a title that they once used during their days as an undergrad or graduate student, not realizing that the title has been pulled from the backlist of the publisher as ‘out of print.’ The advent of short-run digital technology has allowed publishers to offer books that are no longer in print in quantities anywhere from one to a few thousand. The technology in recent years also has opened up custom publishing divisions at major educational publishers. Pearson Education is one of several large educational book publishers to offer such a

Most publishers are relatively tone deaf to adversarial activist campaigns. And so far, large, mainstream publishers have been only lukewarm in their response to voluntary multi-stakeholder collations like the Green Press Initiative/EPA Resource Conservation Challenge, which is calling on publishers to improve their ecological footprint. But, it will be increasingly difficult to ignore the growing number of institutional investors that are calling for big business to address the sustainability challenge. Socially responsible investment funds and indexes that employ sustainability performance ratings now represent in excess of $2 trillion in holdings. The influence of these funds is rising as they are rapidly moving from

Ed Tenthoff, vice president of publishing Technology for Pearson Education; Fran Toolan, president of Quality Solutions; and David LaFauci, vice president and CIO of Courier Corporation, recently discussed the value of planning, information and time-saving initiatives with the editors of BookTech the Magazine. BTM: How would you define supply chain management (i.e., from the perspective of publisher, printer or technical services provider)? Tenthoff: A mutual understanding of requirements versus capabilities that then leads to the ability to maximize efficiencies and minimize conflicting goals. Toolan: From the perspective of a technical services provider, I would define supply chain management as the ability of

On the heels of a fabulous BookTech East 2001, take pause to reflect on the new opportunities afforded by budding technologies It seems somewhat redundant to say these are exciting times for the book publishing industry, when clearly this is not a new phenomenon. Technologies supporting the digital publishing process are virtually spewing from R&D labs like molten lava. There's a lot of hot stuff out there from which to pick and choose. And to raise the industry's temperature even higher, the business is abuzz with tales of publishers taking bold leaps of faith with new media business models. New stuff Just a few