Kelly Gallagher

“If you came here looking for a map, good luck,” joked Perseus Book Group's Rick Joyce, noting that figuring out the new world of discoverbility is “not about map following, but about map building.”

While the metaphor might seem extreme, when it comes to marketing and discoverability in the Internet age, publishers really are, like the early explorers, in uncharted territory. This was the theme of opening keynote delivered by Joyce,  Perseus's Chief Marketing Officer to the gathered publishing professionals at the Metropolitan Pavilion for the first Digital Book World Marketing and Discoverability conference.

September 13, 2012 (NEW PROVIDENCE, NJ) -- More than half the consumers of books classified for young adults aren’t all that young. Fully 55% of buyers of works that publishers designate for kids aged 12 to 17 – nicknamed YA books -- are 18 or older, with the largest segment aged 30 to 44.

“Awesome,” should be the headline to describe the features and analytical power of the new AAP/BISG sponsored Bookstats report on industry sales and trends, for which the analytical work is managed by Bowker.

It is especially so when one looks back on the decades during which BISG struggled with data gathering and data analysis tools that were short of the task—resting on a lot of intuitive extrapolation; and the AAP contented itself with industry reporting that used actual returns from participating publishers and no extrapolations; and neither included most of the emerging vast universe of independent publishers. And publishers had two sets of figures to work with.

TODD RUTHERFORD was 7 years old when he first understood the nature of supply and demand. He was with a bunch of other boys, one of whom showed off a copy of Playboy to giggles and intense interest. Todd bought the magazine for $5, tore out the racy pictures and resold them to his chums for a buck apiece. He made $20 before his father shut him down a few hours later. A few years ago, Mr. Rutherford, then in his mid-30s, had another flash of illumination

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      A hearty and sincere thank you goes out to the Virginia-based poet and journalist Beth Wellington this morning, for alerting us to a fantastic 44-page PowerPoint presentation that was originally prepared by Kelly Gallagher for a June 2012 Publishers Launch conference. If you happen to have a bit of time to spare [...]

Twenty-four percent of Indian adults with Internet access have bought an ebook. Now that group could get a lot bigger: Amazon has launched a standalone Kindle Store in India and is selling Kindle exclusively through Indian electronics chain Croma.

Amazon does not yet operate a general e-commerce site in India, but it is now selling ebooks there. On Wednesday the company launched the India Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestoreindia), which sells over a million titles priced in Indian Rupees.

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