September 2007 Issue

 

2007 Gold Ink Awards

The 20th year of the Gold Ink Awards—the industry’s most prestigious print competition—featured some of the storied awards’ most impressive and highest-quality submissions to date. A talented team of judges poured through more than 1,400 entries in this milestone year, awarding Gold, Silver, Bronze and Pewter honors in 46 categories spanning a wide variety of printed products. Printers and publishers submitted their finest pieces, and more than a dozen judges rolled up their sleeves to scrutinize and examine the entries’ each and every detail over four days in May at the Philadelphia headquarters of North American Publishing Co.—parent company of Book Business and Publishing

Being a Part of Something Golden

I probably say this every year, but the end of summer/early fall is pretty much my favorite time of year. Besides the promise of the fabulous fall weather, it’s the time of year that we publish all of the winners of our annual Gold Ink Awards competition (page 22)—the best of the best in book production and manufacturing—and we announce the inductees into the Publishing Executive Hall of Fame. In case I forget what an honor induction into the Hall of Fame really is, every year someone says something to remind me. This year, I was talking to someone at one of the

Boosting Sales Is No Game to LeapFrog

In the first half of this decade, sales were skyrocketing for LeapFrog SchoolHouse—a division of LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. and publisher of interactive, research-based assessment and curriculum content for the PreK-8 education market. The Emeryville, Calif.-based company saw a boom in net sales from $8.8 million in 2001 to $55.2 million in 2004. In 2005, however, the company faced some hard (and controversial) times, and its sales began to drop. Last winter, LeapFrog SchoolHouse made a number of changes to get the company back on a growth track, including restructuring the organization, hiring a new president and focusing on its strongest segment within the

Exercising Your Rights

Publishers of all sizes have to manage detailed and vital information about the rights they own, the rights they have sold, and the royalties they either owe or are owed. It can be a significant accounting undertaking. Especially with the burgeoning digital marketplace, book publishers are increasingly redistributing their content in any number of ways and thus, generating additional revenue––as well as the need to manage additional rights and royalties. Fortunately, there are a number of solutions on the market today, from services that help publishers license their content to those that help automate the tracking and payments process to save time and

Increasing Sales, One Chapter at a Time

It’s a good time to be a professional publisher. This industry segment continues to post above-average sales growth, while many of its publishers are at the forefront of the digital revolution that has been transforming the way we publish and read books. According to the Book Industry Study Group’s “Book Industry Trends 2007” report, sales of professional books increased by 3.2 percent in 2006 over the previous year, from $8.6 billion to $8.9 billion. This increase ranked professional publishing as the third-largest growth segment in dollar sales, behind only religious books (5.6-percent growth) and adult trade (3.9-percent growth). A ‘Glutted’ Market While the

Weinstein’s Wisdom

By Jim Calder Michael Weinstein’s 31-year work history reads like a list of top publishing companies: Macmillan, Pitman Publishing, Addison Wesley, Random House, McGraw-Hill, HarperCollins and Pearson Education, among others. Currently, Weinstein is vice president, EDP (editing, design and production) and manufacturing, at Oxford University Press. After decades working at some of the most notable companies in the industry and after many professional accomplishments, Weinstein’s career achievements now are being recognized. Weinstein is being inducted into the Publishing Executive Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed on the leading publishing executives in book, magazine and advertising production. And, he is only the second executive