Weather metaphors make it easy to declare this year’s Book Expo America a “hot” show and indeed we had the title of Boris Kachka’s forthcoming August book Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, on our minds many times Thursday, in the aisles and across the evening of parties. But here’s a little secret of trade show reporting: Look back and you’ll see that nearly every show (except for those convened on the eve of lawsuits and world economic crises) is dutifully reported as having an upbeat […]
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ABA Sales “Hold Our Own” After Strong 2012
ABA ceo Oren Teicher shared continuing positive sales news with member booksellers at the organization’s annual meeting on Thursday afternoon at BEA. “As you know, unit sales in our channel, as reported to our weekly Indie Bestseller List, were up almost 8 percent last year,” Teicher said. “This year we are seeing the good news continue, as we hold our own in unit sales for 2013 against a first quarter in 2012 that saw very strong double-digit growth.” The coming NPR promotional campaign run by Kobo is “a direct assault” on the problem that “Kobo remains the most successful e-book […]
BEA Panels: Gladwell, Executives, and More
Malcolm Gladwell was interviewed by Brad Stone at BEA’s IDPF Digital Book conference on Wednesday, billed as a conversation about the future of digital publishing but more a discussion of his forthcoming book DAVID AND GOLIATH: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants–and a selection of at least some misfit ideas. Gladwell’s main thought on digital publishing is that people should be able to buy a book’s content and receive it in every format, from print to digital to audio. Not only did he have little guidance, but he showed little regard for the digerati in the audience: “People […]
Some Stories from Publishers Launch BEA
It’s hard to run your own show and cover it at the same time. We’ll have some of our own reports from the interesting Publishers Launch BEA Conference shortly–but in the meantime, there are some stories from others to check out. TheStreet.com has a long write-up of Providence Equity Partners senior advisor Brian Napack’s discussion of investment, consolidation and scale. “Amazon, at its heart, is a customer relationship management company. Publishers, at their heart, are author relationship management companies.” But each needs, and is interested in developing for themselves, what the other one has. Laura Owen at paidContent has a long piece on what […]
Macmillan CEO John Sargent Speaks on DOJ, Amazon, and More
“If you see me struggling with language, and being tentative, it’s because I’m going to be called to testify next week in court,” Macmillan ceo John Sargent said near the beginning of his ABA keynote conversation with outgoing president Becky Anderson. He’d already cautioned the audience that he was nervous to “step out of the background” as, someone generally reticent to comment publicly. Despite those caveats, Sargent ended up having quite a bit to say about the Department of Justice (though not as much about Macmillan’s settlement), self-publishing, Amazon, and other publishing matters. Sargent felt the need to speak out […]
ABA Membership Ranks Rise for Fourth Year In A Row
If three is a trend is four a pattern? As the industry prepares for BEA — which includes the American Booksellers Association’s annual meeting — the organization announced to the AP that ABA member stores have increased for the fourth straight year. CEO Oren Teicher says the ABA now has 1,632 members, a gain of 65 from a year ago. Total member locations rose by 71, to 1971 in all. The previous year the organization added 55 members, and the year before that they picked up 102 members — though that gain was driven by the merger with the Association of Booksellers […]