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 23rd, 2011
Last evening I wrote to a colleague who runs a regional association of trade book publishers. I thought I would share the letter: Hi xxx, I thought of you when I read this just now in today’s Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703529004576160421561955208.html I think it’s a very good article just because it presents the unvarnished truth…
July 5th, 2010
I uncover some unusual sites and blogs because I have a Google Alert for “future of publishing.” I can’t imagine I would have found it otherwise. Andrew Shaffer is the author of the forthcoming Harper Perennial Paperback Original Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love, to be published January 4, 2011. (Unusual exactitude for a big…
July 3rd, 2009
HarperCollins Publishers, one of the largest English-language publishers with sales over $1 billion, is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Last fall it launched authonomy, ostensibly a sort of social networking site, where authors could submit 10,000 words or more from an unpublished book (or self-published) and the devoted and literate members of the authonomy…