World Book Night announced that special editions of Solomon Northup’s public domain book Twelve Years a Slave will be given free to schools for distribution as part of World Book Night on April 23. Executive director Carl Lennertz notes, “One third of our half million free books each year go into underfunded rural and urban high schools, and when Dover Publications offered to work with us on this, we jumped at the chance.” In other announcements, Vintage announced that the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has sold 100 million units worldwide. Vintage itself has sold over 45 million units in the […]
Book Fairs
Another Successful Winter Institute
The ABA’s 9th annual Winter Institute in Seattle last week once again drew a sellout crowd of more than 500 enthusiastic booksellers, with almost 40 percent of attendees — and 60 bookstores — present for the first time. Those independent booksellers had reason for optimism, as ceo Oren Teicher said at the first of two rep picks’ luncheons on Wednesday. After showing an 8 percent gain in sales at ABA stores in 2012, “we have held on to virtually all of those gains in 2013,” Teicher noted. (In a follow-up email, Teicher explained he kept his statistics “somewhat vague overall” […]
Successful Failure
Last week’s Digital Book World conference did a lot to bridge the gap between start-ups from outside the publishing business and innovators within the industry, and one of the more inspiring presentations came from Sourcebooks ceo Dominique Raccah in one of the closing sessions. Her slides on Rethinking Failure: Finding The Opportunities In Our Challenges are available online now. “We have to rethink our whole view on failure,” Raccah said. “It is hurting us.” The essence of her presentation was to suggest that we stop talking about failure when trying new things, and stick to discussing “experiments and results.” (When we […]
Stock Expert Cramer Says Amazon Shares Are “Modern Art”
Later in the morning television host and author of the just-released Get Rich Carefully Jim Cramer provided an investment view of publishing and the larger media landscape. Extending the morning’s discussion, he said, “I simply don’t know how to stop Amazon. It’s not constrained by the need to make money. It’s modern art. It’s Jackson Pollock. It can’t be explained. It’s a Rothko, and everyone else is Rembrandt — and everyone else is worth a lot less.” At the same time, Cramer noted, “it is the best multi-year growth story out there.” Ironically, because the share price is fueled by […]
The “Bezosologists” At DBW
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reporter and author of The Everything Store Brad Stone opened Wednesday morning’s Digital Book World sessions focused on Amazon. “In a way, this is a room full of Bezosologists; we all have to be.” Stone spoke in particular to the company’s vast ambition and persistence: “The one constant is Amazon’s 20-year history is that it does not give up…and can be fairly ruthless and self-absorbed in how it constantly tries to disrupt the existing order.” He referred to “the notorious one-star review of my book that was heard round the world,” in which “MacKenzie Bezos took issue with […]
How Startups and Publishers Can Work With Each Other
One prominent topic at Digital Book World Tuesday was the relationship between startups and publishers, and how both sides can best work together. (As a case in point, Ingram Ventures announced an investment in social ebook retail startup Librify — after first meeting them at DBW a year ago.) In the morning, Mike Shatzkin presented the results of the DBW Startup Survey, with respondents from 43 startups and 25 book publishers from 8 companies. 74 percent of startups “considered themselves disruptive” to publishers — which is an inherent conflict — and said that the toughest challenges they face with our industry […]