The Future Of Publishing Blog by Thad McIlroy
June 9th, 2018
In the Cathedral Not quite invisible, the slow-time-gathering dust falls upon the choir, where stalls sing silently during the sermon. It tells of a Saviour who came to save this world so to leave it sublime. What happened? Did He change His mind? —David Beard, 1987
May 30th, 2018
Only a wealthy man could lament, as Len Riggio did yesterday that “the average paperback costs two and a half times the minimum wage. When I started,” he said “it was one half the minimum wage.” Speaking at the opening of Book Expo in New York Riggio said that the high prices of books is impeding a new…
January 9th, 2018
Over the holidays I received an inquiry from a journalist about book buying, was it more of an impulse or a plan. What’s the breakdown? Seemed like a simple enough question. From my studies on book buying I knew that the impulse percentage was fairly high, higher than many would expect. We want to think…
September 11th, 2017
Designed to help publishers market their books online, OptiQly is a brand new software-as-a-service (SAAS) platform for book publishers. Initially just for Amazon*, OptiQly (pronounced optically) assesses a book’s “Brand Authority” and “Product Authority” to derive a “OQ Score” comparing that against a pre-determined optimal measure. To reach a top OQ score it recommends a series of steps to improve “Authority”.
July 11th, 2017
I do fret about the future of publishing. For all kinds of reasons. We’ve seen what happened to newspapers. And then the same thing happened to magazines (more or less). The future of periodical publishing in print is between challenging and bleak.