Audience Development

Linda Zecher wants to put Carmen Sandiego and Curious George to work. Zecher, the chief executive at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Co., is pushing the Boston textbook publisher beyond the classroom and into people’s homes by mining a treasure trove of curious monkeys, hairy-toed hobbits, and other characters from the company’s small, but venerable trade book…

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...

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...

While the music industry continues to respond to the changes in consumer behaviour emanating from technological advances, audiobook publishers are facing many of the same issues. One major subject for record labels has been the question of ownership versus access: do consumers want to own content or are they happy simply to access it whether…

Bookmate, which now spans several global markets including Southeast Asia, Russia and Sweden, announced yesterday its first foray into Latin America. Through a partnership with Tigo Mobile, the social reading and ebook subscription platform will provide over 40,000 Spanish-language ebooks to readers in Paraguay and Guatemala. Bookmate has also launched its self-publishing platform in these…

Visit the Central branch of New York City's Queens Library at 12:55 p.m. on a Tuesday, and you'll see about 100 people outside, waiting for the doors to open. At 1 p.m. they file in: Some settle in the comfy saucer chairs, while others rest in armchairs facing four TVs and open a newspaper. Splashes of blue and green interrupt white walls, and computer areas are separated by category: job information, adult learning center, and "young adult learning."

But the reach of the Queens Library extends beyond the walls of its 65 physical branches.

To coincide with the conference, ALA released its own National Policy Agenda for Libraries, developed by an advisory committee of major library organizations. The two major thrusts of the document, which provides a framework for advocacy, are around capacity building and advancing the public interest. Under the rubric of the first come the core areas of library impact (and outcome measurement): education and learning, employment and entrepreneurship, health and wellness, government information services (which includes providing access to the social safety net), heritage and history.

Recent years have brought publishers greater access to data, and with it, more nuanced insight into everything from the topics that certain demographics are interested in to the completion rates of specific books. While most publishers may not aspire to replicate the latest literary fad to the farcical extent that Homer does, some in the industry have expressed concerns that an overreliance on data in service of reducing risk could stymie the creative aspects of title acquisition and diminish the vibrancy of the industry

There's a school of thought that contends the publishing market is a "fixed pie," in which total revenues are flat and unlikely to change.  While the marketplace has reached a limit when it comes to traditional book buying, publishers can still grow the pie by capitalizing on the opportunities digital media and platforms present to package, distribute, and sell content in new ways. 

The app's features include a social feed which will allow users to follow their friends, favourite authors and celebrities on Bookmate, while also sharing their favourite books and passages.