April 2nd, 2019
Updated March, 2024. In this third post of a three-part series (part 1 is here), I’ll focus directly on the book publishing industry and how the next recession could be felt. I hope that an analysis of the impact of past recessions might arm us for the next.
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”.
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…
February 9th, 2016
The other day I was in my local branch of the Vancouver Public Library. It’s a small branch within a community center. They do a good job of serving our neighborhood, of course with a full assortment of reading spaces, working spaces for students, a play space for the kiddies, a handful of computers and a small…