Eugene G. Schwartz is editor at large for ForeWord Reviews, an industry observer and an occasional columnist for Book Business magazine. In an earlier career, he was in the printing business and held production management positions at Random House, Prentice-Hall/Goodyear and CRM Books/Psychology Today. A former PMA (IBPA) board member, he has headed his own publishing consultancy, Consortium House. He is also Co-Founder of Worthy Shorts Inc., a development stage online private press and publication service for professionals as well as an online back office publication service for publishers and associations. He is on the Publishing Business Conference and Expo Advisory Board.
As heralded in Teleread earlier, self-publishing poster child Joe Konrath and Matthew Yglesias, Executive Editor of Vox, appeared against Franklin Foer, former editor of The New Republic, and attorney and author Scott Turow, in the Intelligence Squared debate in New York , last weekend, arguing the motion: “Amazon is the reader’s friend.” And whatever one thinks of […]
In light of Amazon’s growing dominance in the book market and its recent and very public negotiations with Big 5 publisher Hachette, Intelligence Squared -- a global forum for debate -- hosted a live stream event on Thursday, January 15, 2015, asking four panelists to support or reject the statement, “Amazon Is the Reader’s Friend.”
It seems like everyone on my RSS feed was doing interviews yesterday. Here are three which are worth a look and listen: 1. Levar Burton | via GalleyCat • Burton, beloved Star Trek actor and host of the children’s show Reading Rainbow, discusses his favorite children’s books. 2. Author Rockband Q&A | via Reddit • Mitch Albom, Scott Turow, Roy Blunt Jr [...]
The number of parties has dwindled and there are fewer blockbuster celebrity authors, but the actual business of book publishing looks a little brighter this year.
Book Expo America, which kicks off at the Javits Convention Center today, is designed to bring independent booksellers together so that publishers can hype books they think will be big sellers in the coming months.
Yesterday, the Alfred A. Knopf imprint announced “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the third book in British writer Helen Fielding’s mega-selling series about the travails of a single woman. The first two books became international sensations in the 1990s
The Supreme Court clarified early in April in Kirtsaeng v Wiley that the “first use” doctrine in copyright law applied to any work lawfully manufactured anywhere in the world and purchased anywhere in the world. This ruling upset many in the publisher world, and relieved many in the library and bookseller world.
First use means that after purchase of a legally manufactured copyrighted work, the user can resell, rent or loan the work without permission of, or royalty payments to, the copyright holder. The used book and library markets, for example, are built on this foundation. Kirtsaeng was purchasing textbooks printed abroad more cheaply and reselling them in the U.S. Wiley lost on its claim that first use should also apply to the first U.S. sale of books manufactured and purchased abroad.
As Scott Turow, President of the Author’s Guild (of which I am a member), saw it in a New York Times op ed on April 7, “The Slow Death of the American Author,” the Kirtsaeng case was only the latest nail in the coffin awaiting authors. It cut off an additional revenue stream, since secondary sales do not pay royalties.
I’ve seen at least four stories today on the Scott Turow editorial in this week’s New York Times (for example, here and here). Turow’s editorial was a mishmash of all sorts of trending stories, offering his comments on used books, libraries, the Kirtsaeng decision, Amazon, and who knows what else. He has been derided, and rightly [...]
