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Michael Healy has a huge task ahead of him as the first executive director of the Book Rights Registry, the creation of which was a stipulation of the Google Book Search settlement agreement between the online search giant and industry organizations including the Association of American Publishers and The Authors Guild.
Dominique Raccah (Sourcebooks) and Andrew Weber (Random House), Co-Chairs of the Book Industry Study Group, Inc. (BISG), announced today that it has formed a search committee to consider candidates for the position of BISG Executive Director
Simba Information, which recently produced the groundbreaking "Trade E-Book Publishing 2009" report, has added "Trends in Trade Book Retailing" to its research offerings.
Trade e-book sales were $12,100,000 for April, a 228.3% increase over April 2008 ($3,700,000).
Who hasn’t tried the excuse, “My dog ate my homework,” on a teacher? Success with that excuse now is nearly impossible, according to experts in educational book publishing. So much of what teachers currently do involves digital materials and tools that, short of a network failure or computer glitch, a student would be hard-pressed to come up with a similar excuse.
"We’ve almost become accustomed to an uninterrupted flow of bad news,” said Michael Healy, executive director of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) at the organization’s sixth-annual Making Information Pay event, held May 7 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City. Falling sales, shrinking margins, closing bookstores and job losses are among the negatives facing the industry, noted Healy.
I am galvanized. Not only have I always wanted to say that, but it’s true. I am in awe of what is happening in this industry. Attending Making Information Pay (MIP) a couple of weeks ago fueled this feeling. A few things, in particular, struck a chord.
10.5 million Number of sheets of paper that were used last year in Princeton University campus clusters—equivalent to 100,000 reams of paper, or about 5,000 trees. Princeton cited this figure on its Web site when explaining why it is participating in the Kindle DX E-reader Pilot Program this fall. The university hopes that students’ use of the Kindle DX will reduce their desire to print or photocopy without hindering their ability to learn.
In the current economy, the book manufacturing industry appears to be caught square between the proverbial rock and a hard place: on the one side, a publishing business suffering from decreased consumer demand and on the other, suppliers destabilized by the credit crunch. The industry, however, is showing surprising resiliency, having been thrust into difficult times with eyes wide open. Printers are determined to meet the challenge of a new marketplace defined by multiplatform delivery systems, environmental awareness and niche distribution models in the hopes that the post-“great recession” economy will find a book manufacturing industry emerging leaner, “greener” and more focused on the place of books in a digital age.
Maybe divine intervention will reverse the profit slide for religious book publishers. But industry experts believe it also would be prudent to consider scaling back on titles, reducing returns, making intelligent use of data, investing in digital opportunities and otherwise adapting business models for future success.
