Procter & Gamble

Around the time I started working in trade publishing, Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" was a huge bestseller, clocking sales at record rates. I was impressed, and still am, but my thinking on what these numbers meant was altered by the comment of a colleague: "Just because people are buying the book, doesn't mean they're reading it."

And, of course, it's true. Hawking's book was a trendy intellectual purchase. Drop a copy of this much-talked-about dense and brainy bestseller on your coffee table, and guests were sure to gain a favorable impression of your erudition. But speak knowledgably about black holes, quarks and antimatter? Mere ownership of the tome did not such conversations guarantee.

Somewhere between the ages of five and 11, kids stop reading. Well, maybe not all of them, but a recent study spearheaded by Scholastic Inc. shows that readership drops off as children age. The results show that 40 percent of kids between the ages of five and eight read for fun every day. Only 29 percent of nine- to 11-year-olds read as frequently, and that number declines sharply through age 17. Running Press Book Publishers thinks it knows why—and how to reverse this troublesome trend. Running Press, a Philadelphia-based imprint of The Perseus Books Group, will release a new young adult (YA) title, “Cathy’s

A news story about a partnership with a book publisher and a cosmetics company set off a blizzard of discussion last week around the industry about what the proper role between product placement deals in publishing and the readership it intends to target should be. In an article published in The New York Times on June 12, reporter Motoko Rich set off the debate about a new promotional relationship between Running Press, an imprint of Perseus Book Group, and Cover Girl, a division of Proctor and Gamble. The deal will see Cover Girl products being mentioned in the pages of the upcoming young adult novel,