People Magazine

On Wednesday, Oprah Winfrey announced on her TV show that Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” published in 2006 by the Knopf Group of Random House Inc., is her second book club pick of the year and just her third overall selection since September 2005 and the controversial “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey. Oprah’s Book Club was established in September 1996, and since then, her selections have pulled some obscure works onto best-seller lists. However McCarthy’s book is a relatively safe bet for Oprah, already receiving much national acclaim. “The Road” is on the USA Today Bestseller List, a National Book Critic’s

Publishers rely on the Internet or classified ads to spread the word about new positions, but how can you guarantee you will attract people with the best or even relevant skill sets? Furthermore, the more important question may be: Exactly what skill sets should you be looking for in today’s constantly changing publishing environment? Beyond the obvious characteristics any publisher would want in a new hire—intelligence, loyalty, enthusiasm, writing and editing skills, an eye for layout, business and marketing savvy, and so forth, publishers may wonder if they should expand the perimeter of the required skill set to prepare for embracing the multimedia

Whether it’s through Dr. Phil’s advice on “getting real” or Dale Carnegie’s strategies on “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” we seem to be incessantly compelled to better ourselves. Besides spiritual and professional self-help books, do-it-yourself books have exploded in popularity over the years (the “For Dummies” line published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. among them). But like any other market segment, the self-help book market faces challenges—challenges that are, in fact, similar to those most publishers are facing at the moment. They also face great opportunity in a changing marketplace—opportunity that some say could be easily missed. Community Is Key

The staff of Zagat Survey LLC consisted of just Tim and Nina Zagat when the pair first set off in 1979 to compile restaurant reviews contributed by their friends to help create the first of their popular restaurant guides. The book series since has become virtually synonymous with dining, and the staff consists of 110 full-time employees, plus local editors in more than 70 cities around the globe. Tim Zagat, the CEO of Zagat Survey, faces the same challenges that other publishers do as his company prepares to face the opportunities and challenges that digital content delivery creates. What are the biggest challenges you

The hot-button issues in the book industry today surround an increased focus on content and alternative forms of distribution. Publishers are still keeping a watchful eye on the Internet and the fear that it may replace the print-based distribution business in the future. But there appears to be a greater acceptance and realization that “content” is a publisher’s real asset, and that the delivery method means nothing if the content isn’t outstanding. An increased focus on content, book search tools, digital distribution, a declining print readership, increased used-book sales, rising fuel and paper costs, and decreasing bookshelf space in retail superstores are all

Don’t be afraid of electronic distribution—make your content available online, because it’s the best way to appear on radar screens these days. For smaller marketing departments, it’s the best way to market your books. So says the National Academies Press’ (NAP) Michael Jensen. “You have to give material to search engines to munch,” he says. “Content is its own best advertising. That’s only going to increase in significance. Most people feel like once the PDF gets out there, suddenly the market will dry up, [but] it’s demonstratively not true. I don’t know of an instance where somebody made the material available for free

A “who’s who” of the book industry convened in the Big Apple last month to mingle as the annual National Book Awards were bestowed on this year’s batch of winning authors. The black-tie affair, the award’s 57th ceremony, took place at New York’s Marriott Marquis on Nov. 15. This year, the judges chose from 1,259 books submitted by publishers for what has become a leading literary prize for Americans since it was first given in 1950. Richard Powers’ “The Echo Maker,” published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, earned the top award for fiction this year, while Timothy Egan took home the nonfiction award for “The Worst

If there’s ever a good time to talk about the state of book distribution, this would be it. Right now, everyone is abuzz about changes occurring within the system thanks in part to the July release of Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.” Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, declares the demise of common culture and cites occurrences called “long-tailed distributions,” or distributions to a greater number of smaller markets, rather than one, big mass market. According to Anderson, this helps distributors since they are no longer cut off by bottlenecks of distribution, such as limited

Children’s books may be about finding the kid in all of us, but everyone in the children’s publishing business agrees that they have to grow up when it comes to taking advantage of profitable opportunities. The Internet is clearly not going away, yet with the need to protect children from cyberspace predators, publishers have to go through parents to get through to their young audiences. Once you reach them, however, it can’t hurt to be as multidimensional as possible. Jason Wells, publicity and marketing director for New York-based Harry N. Abrams Inc., says kids are looking for books that are not just self-contained

Starbucks, the world’s largest multinational chain of coffee shops, will begin offering books for sale alongside its beverages starting this fall. The company announced this week plans to periodically add books to its retail merchandise at more than 5,400 locations throughout the United States. The program will launch with Mitch Albom’s newest novel, “For One More Day.” Hyperion Books will publish the book on Sept. 26, and it will appear in Starbucks a week after it becomes available in traditional retail stores. The book will be on sale at Starbucks locations from Oct. 3 until the second week of November. Starbucks Entertainment announced that Albom, the