Recently Barnes & Noble announced that it would not sell books in its brick and mortar store that are published by Amazon’s new print publishing division. Shortly after this, Books-a-Million, Canada’s largest bookseller Indigo Books and Music and the American Booksellers Association also announced that they were joining the boycott.
These are, indeed, interesting times we live in. Have you ever heard of an instance like this? In ANY industry? Competitor B launches a boycott of competitor A, paints it as being for the good of the industry, and gets support from other competitors? Not I.
Book Business' own Eugene G. Schwartz was on the scene at the third annual Digital Book World Conference. He filed this comprehensive report from the proceedings.
Attendees at the third annual Digital Book World Conference heard reports that while publishers are in fact healthy and thriving in the new digital age, a lot more work is needed to let go of the habits of the past and live in the new interactive, multi-platform and vertically patterned business world of the future.
The cohort of newly minted consultants in attendance—emerging out of downsizing and transformation—are witness to their price as well as their opportunities.
It’s time to come up with new words for what we’re creating. “Ebooks” just doesn’t cut it anymore.
The past week pretty much covered the gamut of what’s going on in our industry for me. Tuesday I heard a wonderful, impassioned speech about physical books. And then on Thursday… well, perhaps you’ve heard that Apple made an announcement or two.
On Tuesday night, Kevin Spall (CEO of Thomson-Shore, Inc.) gave a speech at the Book Industry Guild of New York meeting. Kevin spoke, not only of his background, but spent some time reminding us what a wonderful thing the printed/bound book is. The history, of course, is rich. I confess that I did not realize that codex binding (basically the same thing we do today) has been around for over 1,700 years. Of course, some will describe that history as “rich” and others as “ancient” (and not in a good way).
This week an article in the NY Times went viral. Well, it spread around the publishing industry anyway, so maybe we should say it had a slight head cold? The article speaks to some publishers adding special design effects on the covers of certain titles. The effects include elaborate embossing, special photographs, a shiny gold Rorschach, etc.
By definition, libraries have always served as a “threat” to publishers—why pay for it, when you can get it for free at your local library? And yet, libraries and publishers have existed side-by-side. I think a point that gets missed is that when you give people an opportunity to open their minds up, to explore and dream you create additional demand.
By definition, libraries have always served as a “threat” to publishers—why pay for it, when you can get it for free at your local library? And yet, libraries and publishers have existed side-by-side. I think a point that gets missed is that when you give people an opportunity to open their minds up, to explore and dream you create additional demand.
EPUB defines a way to represent, package and encode structured and semantically enhanced Web content.
No doubt you’ve heard that Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group USA and Hachette Book Group have agreed to create a shared website, to be called Bookish.com. They will provide start-up financing, but … at least 14 publishers will participate. … My first reaction was that this really speaks to that whiff of desperation in the air for publishers.
Over the past year or so, I have been attending timely and informative book publishing lunch hour Meetup meetings—first come, first serve by advance sign-up —sponsored by Susan Danziger's Publishing Point. They are held in donated upper- floor meeting rooms in the high-rise midtown Manhattan headquarters of major houses such as Random House, Hachette, News Corporation, McGraw Hill—and this past March 23, by CBS, parent of Simon & Schuster, in Studio 19.
My blog title comes from an anti-Vietnam War song by Eric Andersen. It's a pretty common phrase, but applied to the loss of an 18-year-old, a close friend, America's innocence, etc. it still resonates powerfully for me.
