A panel of ceo’s–Ellen Archer from Hyperion, John Ingram from Ingram, Dominique Raccah from Sourcebooks, and John Donatich from Yale University Press, moderated by F+W’s David Nussbaum–addressed a variety of issues at Digital Book World Tuesday morning. On the encroachments of retailers like Amazon into publishing itself, Raccah observed that “low-hanging fruit is going to go fast. If it’s easy, get out of it.” She is focusing Sourcebooks on “reader-centric models” where they can identify complex problems and serve them. Archer noted that yesterday’s NBC News publishing announcement “was particularly interesting” and said she is looking to “shape my business […]
Book Fairs
DBW: Publishing Execs to Invest In Consumer Data and Relationships
“We want to lead the league in insights per minute,” Digital Book World conference chair Mike Shatzkin said at the show’s opening Tuesday morning, and James McQuivey of Forrester Research helped to further that goal with additional reports from their survey of 74 book publishing executives. (We ran initial excerpts the other week.) McQuivey found that 70 percent of those executives polled “believe that to succeed in the future, they must have a direct consumer relationship”–and 66 percent “will invest in acquiring customer data to help accomplish that” in 2012. Executives themselves are split as to what makes for the […]
DBW: Shatzkin’s Opening Thoughts
Digital Book World conference chair Mike Shatzkin began the ever-growing third annual gathering before an expected crowd of 1,600 people or more with a rapid-fire checklist of “the things publishers need to be thinking about in 2012,” many of which drove the agenda of the two-day conference. (As you know, Publishers Lunch and Publishers Launch Conferences are co-presenters of DBW.) Among Shatzkin’s points: “Publishers need to be at least as adventurous and experimental about pricing as authors are on their own.” He pointed out that, while XML has grown, “a lot of useful information is routinely lost between an author’s […]
eBook Sales Rise 350% at Disney
President of Disney Publishing Worldwide Russell Hampton opened the afternoon sessions at the Publishers Launch Conference Children’s Publishing Goes Digital on Monday, saying “The digital revolution is about giving readers choice and growing our collective business.” He added, “It is our challenge as publishers to make our offerings accessible to children so that they may read what what they want, when they want, how they want.” Citing a variety of signs of digital growth in Disney’s business lines, Hampton noted that 30 percent of the first week sales and 20 percent of all sales of Rick Riordan’s latest hardcover bestseller […]
Nook Kids Asks for More Audio and “Boy Content”
Nook Kids director of business development/content acquisition Kevin O’Connor shared a variety of observations on what’s working well in the Nook Kids store at Monday’s Publishers Launch Conference Children’s Publishing Goes Digital event. “I beg you, beg you, beg you beg you to create audio for your ebooks. It’s so essential for it to sell. The vast majority of what we sell is either interactive or has audio in it. It’s naturally going to sell better.” O’Connor, who was previously in the music business, cited singer/performer Laurie Berkner’s PARTY DAY as among their stronger ebook sellers. “Boy content [is] overperforming” […]
The 2012 Winter Institute Books Preview
The ABA’s Winter Institute convenes this week, and each year the number of attending authors and books being touted grows ever larger (this year more than 70 writers are taking part in various luncheons and evening receptions over the three-day event.) As part of our coverage of Wi7, and repeating what we did for last year’s Winter Institute, we’ve culled a list of what we think are the most notable forthcoming Winter and Spring adult trade titles being touted in New Orleans this week to ten — offering a mix of reviews of those we’ve already read with “scouting reports” […]