May 30th, 2017
…with good luck, not with a solid strategy. So writes Sam Missingham in an astute article published yesterday, called “Print sales might be rallying, but don’t get complacent.” It should to be read by the management of every traditional publishing company.
March 30th, 2017
A few weeks ago AuthorEarnings released their latest book industry report. As always, there’s a lot of important information to grapple with—this time, even the title takes some wrangling: February 2017 Big, Bad, Wide & International Report: covering Amazon, Apple, B&N, and Kobo ebook sales in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The…
August 1st, 2016
This post examines the latest quarterly financial reports from the big 5 book publishers and tries to draw some conclusions from the data. The big 5 are, of course, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. These companies are often seen as emblematic of the state of traditional trade book publishing in the…
March 1st, 2016
Catching up on my industry reading I’m facing the large effort required to try to digest the latest Author Earnings report and then wading into the vast cesspool of vitriol it engenders.
January 27th, 2016
“Reading comprehension,” Wikipedia tells us “is the ability to read text, process it and understand its meaning” (emphasis mine). I remember in Grade 5 at St. Anselm’s School when Mrs. Webber introduced our class to SRA cards, a ground-breaking reading comprehension game that help teach kids that reading wasn’t just mouthing the words and stringing the…