Fall 2015

 

As Book Purchasing Behavior Changes, So Must Publishers’ Sales Metrics

In 2015, the publishing industry is seeing signs that ebook sales as a share of all books is flattening out. Whatever the forces behind this are, publishers are forced to explore better methods of optimizing ebook revenue...


Be Inspired By Online Media When Designing Digital Books

As book publishers adapt to a world where both print and digital editions are desirable to readers, it is important for us to focus on formatting the content in a way that best suits how it is being read. But what readers, authors, publishers, and retailers often forget...


Big Ideas & Uncovering the Truisms of Publishing

I like big ideas. I particularly like them as opposed to predictions. Predictions tend to be specific and are usually wrong. Big ideas are like a friendly guide showing us the way, never allowing us to wander too far off the path. They stand true to the test of time. I have two theorems that…


Big Ideas Make Book Publishing Go Round

Book Business is in the ideas game. Everyday we scour the internet and our inboxes, comb through conference notes, and transcribe interviews with leaders in the book industry. We take all this information and try to extract the most important ideas, distributing them in articles, webinars, events, and videos. The Book Business “Big Ideas Issue”…


Explode Format & Promote Discoverability

The digital revolution invaded the research space earlier and more quickly than other areas of publishing. In many ways, we’re a bit further along on the digital transition and with that we hope comes good insight into what the next big thing might be...


How Book Marketers Can Move Beyond Verticals

Verticalization has been the siren song of book publishing for at least a decade, with good reason. There are large, natural communities of readers that lend themselves to verticalization. Romance, Christian publishing, YA fandom, technical manuals...


How Savvy Publishers Benefit from Digital Book Printing

A Book Is a Terrible Thing to Waste It’s no secret the cost of printing books is driven up by inaccurate forecasting and inefficient manufacturing processes—often leading to stockpiles of books in warehouses and landfills. According to the Book Industry Environmental Council (BIEC), in a 2006 benchmark, nearly 25% of all books were being returned.…


How Small University Presses Can Gain Scale Through Collaboration

Big ideas often come in small packages -- sometimes just the size of a book, or a regional university press, or in the space of a 75-minute brainstorming session with creative publishing professionals. For many university presses, finding ways to compensate for limited commercial scale is becoming mission-critical...


P
ublishers & Authors Must Unite Marketing Efforts

Survey the landscape, and you will see authors who are taking marketing into their own hands and successfully creating audiences and loyal followings without help from their publishers. Authors have always deployed additional marketing, but new tools and agencies allow them to enact efforts that are at scale and beyond publishers’ bandwidth...


The Big (and Small) Ideas Changing the Book Industry

Book Business forged new ground last year with the creation of our first ever “Big Ideas” Issue. The special issue invited thought leaders in the book industry to share the big ideas they believe will shape the future of publishing. While we typically focus on strategic advice that can help book publishers run their businesses…


The Book Business Top 20 Book Manufacturers 2015

Last year Book Business revived our ranking of the Top 20 Book Manufacturers. The ranking is a resource intended to help publishers get a more complete view of the major players in the book printing and manufacturing business. And so we’re proud to announce the Top 20 Book Manufacturers ranking for 2015...


Why Bookselling Is Now a Relationships Game

When the topic of direct-to-consumer sales arises in the book industry, a few key concepts come to mind: ecommerce sites, shopping carts, data analytics, and metadata, to name a few. While certainly important, these technical components of a direct sales strategy are rather worthless if publishers overlook a more abstract concept—that is, a “relationship” with…