Content Pro Pulse

Checking facts with players who are still in the game

The Idea Logical Company

MAY 8, 2024

It is four years since Covid and eight years since I have had staff helping me serve consulting clients. My insight into the commercial world of book publishing is no longer informed by daily contact with people making their living in it. In fact, a big chunk of my “professional” activity these days is helping authors decide how to bring their book to market, with “through a regular publisher with an advance-against-royalties deal” being among the least likely of the poss

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Copy

Big disruption hit book publishing before AI showed up

The Idea Logical Company

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Publishers Weekly recently hosted a stimulating and smart online session about AI and publishing , thanks to the organizing and moderating skills of Peter Brantley and Thad McIlroy. The day began with a presentation by former PRH CEO Markus Dohle and ended with one by thought leader Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School, which framed the day perfectly.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Electronics

Bindery Books: A Way to Restructure the Book Publishing Model

The Idea Logical Company

AUGUST 2, 2023

The case has been made here repeatedly over years that the business and operating model of book publishing as it has been throughout my 50+-year career is irretrievably broken. And it is increasingly obvious that this is the case across all “content” businesses — newspapers, magazines, movies, TV, and radio — and for very much the same reasons.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Retail

The problem with bookstores is the problem for bookstores

The Idea Logical Company

JUNE 5, 2023

Three decades ago, if you wanted a trade book, you went to a bookstore or a bigger merchant like Wal-mart or a department store with a book “section” It was actually hard to get a book any other way. That really changed starting with Amazon in 1995 and has continued to splinter since with a large number of online retailers making books available that they (mostly) source through Ingram.

Retail

Retail Publisher Publishing Publishing

Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!

The Idea Logical Company

JANUARY 9, 2023

I was very pleased with my post of last week, about how my friend Ed Rogoff could possibly self-publish a book about health called “Scary Diagnosis” better than it would be delivered to the public by a professional publisher. I put it up. My subscribers got it by email. And then Google put a big bright red WARNING screen on my site saying “malware here, don’t go!

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Engineering

When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author

The Idea Logical Company

JANUARY 4, 2023

We’ve previously explored what I called “the end of the trade publishing concept” , which stems from the now wide-open opportunity to publish available to anybody with a computer and something to deliver as a book. It feels like we may have reached a new benchmark: admittedly a very fuzzy one. But it looks like it has become very difficult, bordering on impossible, for a commercial entity to make money consistently publishing new titles.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Hospitality

Remembering Jim Haynes, the man with more friends than anybody else

The Idea Logical Company

JANUARY 25, 2021

I met Jim Haynes at the first Frankfurt Book Fair I attended, in 1976. I would see him every year when I went back to Frankfurt and any other time I was in Paris, where Jim lived. I think I was one of his ten or fifteen thousand closest friends. Jim’s recent passing in his late 80s has been memorialized by The Guardian , the Times (London), the Scotsman , and the BBC , among others.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Communication

Amazon has done so many smart things that some of the best ones get forgotten

The Idea Logical Company

MARCH 9, 2021

There’s quite a bit of publishing about publishing going on in the next few weeks. British academic John B. Thompson has written a solid scholarly history of book publishing in the past quarter century or so called “Book Wars” that will publish next month, focused on the arrival of ebooks and how publishers and the distribution system have been changed by that opportunity.

Retail

Retail Publisher Publishing Publishing

“The Family Business” is Ingram: the global infrastructure for the book industry

The Idea Logical Company

APRIL 18, 2021

The global infrastructure for the book business that is not Amazon is owned and operated by the Ingram Content Group. In fact, a lot of the global infrastructure of the book business that is identified as Amazon is actually Ingram. And on top of that, there would probably have been no Amazon, certainly not the one we have, if Ingram hadn’t been innovating for more than two decades before Jeff Bezos left Wall Street to became an entrepreneur.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Retail

“Enterprise self-publishing” is coming: the third great disruption of book publishing since the 1990s

The Idea Logical Company

JUNE 20, 2021

The book business is in the early stages of its third great disruption in the past quarter century. The first two both changed the shape of the industry and created winners and losers across the entire value chain: touching every step from how authors got money to how readers got books. Significant institutional players were lost in both prior disruptions, and all the ones who remained had to change their models and practices significantly.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Retail

Why books are different and why enterprises will be discovering they should be issuing them

The Idea Logical Company

JULY 5, 2021

My most recent post noted the rise of what I called “enterprise self-publishing” It increasingly looks to me like enterprise-driven book publishing will become the dominant provider of books over the next decade. What distinguishes it is book publishing as a function in support of other efforts, rather than as a stand-alone business intended to make money.

Retail

Retail Publisher Publishing Publishing

Every publishing strategy should start with Amazon and Ingram

The Idea Logical Company

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Having been out of the day-to-day of book publishing for a few years now, and — like most people — cut off from most routine commercial conversations in the nearly two years of the pandemic, I took a look at some recent opportunities I encountered online to catch up with today’s book biz realities through conferences or seminars to see how they might update me.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Warehousing

Doubts about the Department of Justice’s objection to the PRH acquisition of S&S

The Idea Logical Company

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

There are, at this moment, still five US commercial book publishers of mega-size. Penguin Random House is the biggest; HarperCollins is 2nd; and Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster round out the Big Five. PRH is, approximately, as big as the other four combined (about $4 billion in sales) and HarperCollins is, approximately, as big as the three behind them combined (about $2 billion in sales).

Warehousing

Warehousing Retail Publisher Publishing

How book publishing has changed in recent decades and the puzzling question of what comes next

The Idea Logical Company

JUNE 19, 2022

My book business career (on the fringes since 1958 and pretty fully immersed since 1973) has been spent considering the path from “intellectual property creator” to “book purchaser” This is a world occupied by authors and packagers and agents; by publishers of various sizes and capabilities coordinating the many tasks and steps from the raw material to the purchased book; and by the many in different seats in and out of publishing houses who are in their own way handling

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Retail

“Automated ebook marketing by Open Road; can anybody else do it?”

The Idea Logical Company

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Open Road Integrated Media has been an active client for the past couple of years. I have been intrigued by their claim of having the only really automated ebook marketing system in existence. I can’t say I have the inside knowledge of every other big player’s operations to confirm that is true, but it certainly looks that way from the outside.

IT

IT Marketing Digital Marketing Publisher

What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business

The Idea Logical Company

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Judge Florence Y. Pan ruled today that the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House could not go forward. The ruling was explicitly to protect the “competition” for the “anticipated top-selling books” In other words, the big books by big authors for which only the Big Five can compete regularly (with occasional bids coming in from a couple of other next-tier houses) will continue to have five well-funded suitors.

Publisher

Publisher Publishing Publishing Digital Marketing

Content Pro Pulse

The Idea Logical Company

Checking facts with players who are still in the game

Big disruption hit book publishing before AI showed up

Trending Sources

Bindery Books: A Way to Restructure the Book Publishing Model

The problem with bookstores is the problem for bookstores

Google knocked us out for a couple of days, but we’re back!

When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author

Remembering Jim Haynes, the man with more friends than anybody else

Amazon has done so many smart things that some of the best ones get forgotten

“The Family Business” is Ingram: the global infrastructure for the book industry

“Enterprise self-publishing” is coming: the third great disruption of book publishing since the 1990s

Why books are different and why enterprises will be discovering they should be issuing them

Every publishing strategy should start with Amazon and Ingram

Doubts about the Department of Justice’s objection to the PRH acquisition of S&S

How book publishing has changed in recent decades and the puzzling question of what comes next

“Automated ebook marketing by Open Road; can anybody else do it?”

What the ruling against the PRH-S&S merger means for the publishing business

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