March 7th, 2009
The Wall Street Journal reports today that “Barnes & Noble Inc. acquired Fictionwise, a leading retailer of electronic books, and said it will launch a new e-bookstore this year, as the e-book market heats up. “The purchase, for $15.7 million, comes only a few days after Amazon.com Inc., the country’s largest online bookseller, said it…
October 9th, 2008
I read the news today, oh boy! A little less gloomy than earlier in the week, but another barrage of depressing madness. I found an article from a couple of days ago in The New York Times by Vikas Bajaj titled “Forget Logic; Fear Appears to Have Edge.” It begins: “The technical term for it…
May 23rd, 2021
This blog post is a love song to backlist books. Confined to the shadows beneath the bright light of publisher frontlists, these books are too often neglected. But there are many gems on the backlist: books with proven potential and solid profit margins. Eat your veggies: every publisher knows that focusing attention on the backlist…
August 19th, 2019
Last week the U.S. Census Bureau reported that U.S. bookstore sales dropped 5.1% in the first six months of 2019. I filed the report away — as I always do with industry sales reports — with the thought “up a little here, down a little there….” While a 5% shift is, by most measures, more than…
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…