Publishers Weekly

Friday marks the end of an era. Some, like Warner Bros. executive Dan Fellman, compare its finality to the breakup of the Beatles.

When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the eighth and presumably final film based on the phenom that has sold 450 million books and close to a billion movie tickets, opens this week in theaters from Lahore to Los Angeles, it will be twilight in the Potterverse.

Bowker and Publishers Weekly team again to provide insight into book buying demographics and behavior

In recent years, the tech-savvy 18-to-24 crowd has discovering audiobooks via digital downloads - a potential threat to the traditional audiobook industry, though CD audiobooks remain the backbone of the industry, partly because of massive sales to libraries.

Two years? Three years? Five years? It's a parlor game in publishing circles to speculate how long it will take before e-books constitute a majority of their industry's sales in the U.S.

In part one of this discussion, I discussed how in the word “book,” and in the various ways we hyphenate it, we set the definition and expectation of how we view our work as professionals and how content will be developed.

June 8, 2010, Arlington, VA – A panel of America’s foremost children’s authors, illustrators and content experts will serve as final judges in the PBS KIDS GO! Writers Contest, a national-local contest designed to promote the advancement of children’s reading skills through hands-on, active learning. The Contest, sponsored by PBS KIDS GO! and WNED-TV Buffalo/Toronto, encourages children in grades K-3 in communities across the country to celebrate the power of creating stories and illustrations by submitting their original work.

George Slowik Jr., who acquired Publishers Weekly last month from Reed Business Information, has named four veterans of the magazine as corporate officers. Publisher Cevin Bryerman, co-editorial directors Jim Milliot and Michael Coffey, and children's book editor Diane Roback will serve as vice-presidents in PWxyz, the entity that now owns PW, PublishersWeekly.com, and the BEA, London, and Frankfurt Show Dailies. "I am relying on their expertise, experience, and astounding commitment to the future of this franchise that they've all been part of for many years," said Slowik of the appointees. "Now they are empowered and enabled to act on their ideas, and they have made it very clear to me that it won't be business as usual."

George Slowik, who was publisher of Publishers Weekly in the 1980s and 1990s, has bought the trade publication from Reed Business Information. The sale was announced in a press release from Mr. Slowik’s new company, called PWxyz, created to house the Publishers’ Weekly magazine, Web site and related assets.

What’s the most cost-effective way to market to libraries? How do I find and work with a distributor? Does a social media marketing plan make sense for my company? How do I make more money with special sales?

According to a Publishers Weekly (PW) report yesterday, PW has been officially put on the market for sale, along with its affiliated publications, Library Journal and School Library Journal. Earlier this year, PW's editor-in-chief, Sara Nelson, was laid off. She was one of 7 percent of the staff, including several other top editor's, laid off at PW's parent company, Reed Business Information (a Reed Elsevier company), following Reed Elsevier's failed attempt to sell Reed Business Information in its entirety last year.