Cover Story: Hitting a Moving Target

Given the current downturn, there is little room for making mistakes when it comes to investing precious funds in new ventures. Yet the right sort of investment is essential if publishers are to position themselves for a post-recession book market.

"The first rule of holes is to stop digging," says Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of Idea Logical Co., a strategic adviser to publishers and their trading partners. "The first concern is not the backlist. The first concern is to have creation properties in place today that mean that you won't be worried about 2010 books in 2013. So the first thing to do is to go to a digital workflow."