The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy
July 26th, 2023
Yesterday Lagardère Publishing released its six-month financial data. Sales declined at Hachette Book Group by 8.6%. In its earnings release the company said that “operational efficiency plans, particularly in the United States,” mitigated some of the impact of revenue declines. In May, HarperCollins reported flat sales and profits declines, “driven by ongoing supply chain, inventory…
May 26th, 2023
I’m borrowing this title from another newsletter deliberately — there’s no need to try to improve on it. It gives me a chance to alert my readers to the person who I think is the finest commentator on practical AI — Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who…
March 19th, 2023
Like just about everyone in the world who can read and write, and who likes to look at pretty pictures, I’ve been captivated by the developments in artificial intelligence, LLMs, DALL-E, GPT-3 (and -4) and ChatGPT. Tonight I was watching the wonderful Polish film, EO, mostly about a domestic donkey. There’s a moment where Eo…
November 30th, 2022
NOTE: This new version of my startup report was published by Publishers Weekly in November, 2022, with the title: Book Publishing Startups in the United States 2022: Industry Insights, Analysis, and Investment Opportunities. It is fully updated; hundreds of new listings, and all of the analysis reconsidered. The first version of the report, called An…
October 16th, 2022
My news story about Book.io has just been published in Publishers Weekly (PW), in the weekly print edition and online. It was prompted by the news that Ingram has made an investment in the company, and anything that Ingram invests in is going to draw the publishing industry’s attention. (And now, a day after this…