The passing of publishing giant Tom McCormack makes me recall the interaction he had with my father, Leonard Shatzkin, from the very beginning of Tom’s publishing career. The bios say he was hi...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/a-personal-thought-on-the-passing-of-publishing-legend-tom-mccormack/
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 con...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/checking-facts-with-players-who-are-still-in-the-game/
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 ...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/big-disruption-hit-book-publishing-before-ai-showed-up/
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 increasi...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/bindery-books-a-way-to-restructure-the-book-publishing-model/
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 o...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/the-problem-with-bookstores-is-the-problem-for-bookstores/
The idea that general trade publishing and general trade publishing houses were going to have to change or die was first floated here in a post in 2007 and then expanded upon in a post called “...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/running-a-big-publishing-house-is-not-as-much-fun-as-it-used-to-be/
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 p...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/google-knocked-us-out-for-a-couple-of-days-but-were-back/
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 somethi...
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 “anti...
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 ...
https://www.idealog.com/blog/automated-ebook-marketing-by-open-road-can-anybody-else-do-it/