Blog in Publishing Industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
A big push for digital books? Not quite yet...
By Porchlight
There was an article in last week's issue of BusinessWeek called "Amazon Does Downloads, Sort of: Why its push into digital delivery of books, movies, and music seems halfhearted. " Here at 800-CEO-READ, there is an ongoing discussion about, you guessed it, whether digital will eventually take over the book industry and books as we know them will go away. We all agree that the physical book will never go away - it's too bound up in our culture, and it's still the most portable way of carrying ideas around with us, not to mention the fact that experts overwhelmingly agree that reading printed matter is easier on the eye than reading a screen.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
No Asshole Rule Wins Quills Awards (Business Category)
By Porchlight
The Quill Awards, which they self-describe as "first literary prizes to reflect the tastes of all the groups that matter most in publishing--- readers, booksellers and librarians", were announced this morning. Bob Sutton's No Asshole Rule won the business category from the finalists of Small Is the New Big by Seth Godin, Women & Money by Suze Orman, Send by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, and Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough Jonathan M. Tisch with Karl Weber.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
Where Did The Book Reviews Go?
By Porchlight
The most recent issue of Fast Company makes me think the magazine has dropped their coverage of business books. Booooooo.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / Jack Covert Selects
A New Season begins - August 2007 Books
By Porchlight
I know it is only a few of days into August, but we are starting to see and think about the fall. Jack is quoted today in a Bloomburg News story about Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. He is a little more positive about the book than might be evident from the quote.
Categories: jack-covert-selects, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
More on Harry Potter
By Porchlight
BusinessWeek has an article about the logistics of delivering 12,000,000 books in two days. To quote "If all the trucks that delivered Deathly Hallows were lined up bumper-to-bumper, Scholastic says, the caravan would stretch 15 miles. " Fascinating stuff!
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
Potter Phenomenon
By Porchlight
We can't ignore the publishing highpoint that took place over the weekend. The release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday at 12:01AM generated sales of 8. 3 million copies in its initial day on the market.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
What is it about fables?
By Porchlight
The New York Times interviewed John Kotter yesterday and reported on his business fable Our Iceberg Is Melting. These numbers set the stage: Since its release last September, "Iceberg" has sold some 224,000 copies in hardcover (Leading Change [his prior book] has sold more than a million copies in 10 years), and been translated into 10 languages, with 10 more foreign editions in the works. When I reported on the Publisher Weekly best-seller numbers, Our Iceberg Is Melting was the surprise on the list.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
The business of the book business
By Porchlight
Random House (a piece of that German giant Bertelsmann) recently crunched their publishing numbers with New York magazine. The numbers: There are 1,500 Random House employees in New York. Every week they unveil 67 new books (around 3500 books/year).
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
Bet On Longer Attentions Spans
By Porchlight
Monocle, a very cool and hip European magazine, has an video interview with Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the CEO of Lego. When asked how his company would deal with children's lack of time to play with their product, this was his response: Playing with Lego is like reading a book,. Books, people have said books would die.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
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Blog / News & Opinion
Could Carnegie do it today?
By Porchlight
Back around the early 1900s, Andrew Carnegie set out to build libraries -- 2509 libraries, in fact. 1689 of which were built in the United States. The folks over at Freakonomics point out that publishing was a completely different animal then than it is now.
Categories: news-opinion, publishing-industry
