Sharon R. Cole

Sharon R. Cole
Get Your Multimedia House in Order

Following typical protocol, Ayun Halliday went on tour to promote her latest title, “Dirty Sugar Cookies.” Only, it wasn’t a 30-city tour, it was a 30-blog tour. These days, blog tours are all the rage thanks to the high-speed, seemingly infinite cyberspace connections they create. After interviewing with bloggers who either posted Halliday’s comments online or recorded her on a downloadable audio podcast file, the author’s “appearance” was suddenly linked to other blogs, which linked to more blogs, ad infinitum. Buzz like this is priceless and, interestingly, Halliday’s publisher, Seal Press—an imprint of Avalon Publishing, New York—didn’t have to make too many adjustments

Distribution:Are We Getting Swept Up in ‘The Tail?’

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

From Garage Publisher to Google Prominence

Evan-Moor Educational Publishers Inc. hasn’t always been a major player in the education market. In fact, the company got its modest start more than 25 years ago in a garage, with a staff consisting of three people and an entrepreneurial spirit. Today, Evan-Moor is home to 65 employees and is housed in a 20,000-square-foot facility churning out 60 titles a year in 35 countries. The company provides a compelling example of a publisher who has succeeded in areas other publishers have failed—generating online revenue, profiting from e-books and building an effective search engine strategy. Turning on a Dime It’s funny how a

¿Cómo Se Dice ‘Opportunity’?

Nine hundred billion dollars. That’s the estimated buying power expected of the Latino market within the next five years. Today its buying power is $500 billion here in the United States, and it is considered the 12th largest economy in the world. Information like this can be found on www.SpanishBookMarket.com—a Web site built and maintained by Mark Wesley of Rosa + Wesley, a development firm specializing in graphic design, book production and Spanish translation located in Wheaton, Ill. For those in any business, such numbers are enough to make one’s head spin. Yet some in book publishing are just now waking to this

Best Practices in Fulfillment and Distribution

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

How to Be a Bigger, Better Book Publisher

What does it take to achieve marked growth in the book business? The answer is as varied as the publishing companies in the market today. But a few core factors, such as acquisitions, international licensing and monetary support, can represent elements vital to extensive growth. Tapping into a bit of creativity and adapting to specific market needs also help. Dan Oswald, president and publisher of M. Lee Smith Publishers, LLC, and Rich Wohl, vice president of publishing for Wolters Kluwer Health and Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, have seen this firsthand. Here, they talk about the keys to their companies’ significant expansions and offer tips

ref•er•ence pub•lish•ing n :industry segment faced with dramatic change

It used to be that an encyclopedia salesman knocked on your door in hopes of selling you the latest 12-volume series of books brimming with factual information about everything from binary cell division to Benjamin Franklin. And your only option for finding the definition of onomatopoeia used to be to lug the dictionary off the shelf and thumb through its pages. Those days are, to some extent, history. As a result, reference publishers face significant challenges—reflected in a significant drop in new titles released in 2005—as they strive to adapt to new trends in the market. Paul Kobasa, editor in chief for World

Keeping the Faith

It wasn’t too long ago—about three to four decades—that bookstore chains made no room on their shelves for religious publications. Out of necessity, religious bookstores were conceived, says Rolf Zettersten, publisher of Time Warner Faith, Nashville, Tenn. Times are much different now. Religious books line the shelves of major outlets like Barnes & Noble and Borders, and can be ordered online with just one click. And some large publishers that previously saw religious publishing as a niche market have created religious imprints of their own. Texts representing everything from Judaism and Christianity to Muslim and Hindu are more accessible than ever and frequently