This is the follow-up post to Friday’s examination of The Discussion Over “Author Earnings.” Let’s use this opportunity to speak clearly about what we do know about the ebook sales landscape, since there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about the data that’s available. The worst meme around is the one in which the real and substantial data we have is dismissed for its incompleteness, in favor of people’s personal wishes and observances. The big touchpoints are the direction of the ebook market, and the rise of digital self-publishing. On the former, the US market data clearly indicates that […]
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DBW Opens: Shatzkin, CEOs, O’Reilly, Data and More
The fifth annual Digital Book World Conference officially opened on Tuesday morning in New York to record-setting attendance and exhibits. Morning highlights included a ceo panel with S&S’s Carolyn Reidy, David Nussbaum of F+W Media, Sourcebooks’ Dominique Raccah, and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly and a separate presentation from O’Reilly on how “the real ebook revolution is just beginning.” (Later in the show his company will presenting their Atlas digital publishing platform.) Program chair Mike Shatzkin (and partner in our Publishers Launch Conferences, the co-presenter of DBW) laid out some of the broad themes in his opening remarks. As Shatzkin […]
For Winter Institute 9, The Spring Season and Beyond: More Book Discoveries to Sample and Buzz
A year ago we experimented with extending our Publishers Lunch Buzz Books sampler of meaty pre-publication excerpts of notable new books to Winter Institute (also letting us cover the spring/summer publishing season) — and an amazing 16 of those 28 books wound up as “best of the month” picks on the major bookseller lists. That “class” included some of the most honored books (such as Philipp Meyer’s The Son; Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phemonena; Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life; and many others). Now, along with the official opening of Digital Book World (with the ABA’s Winter Institute set […]
Dealmaking Jumps Ahead of Frankfurt
As usual it’s time for our preliminary report on deal activity ahead of the Frankfurt Book Fair (with our final tallies coming in a week), and it’s clear that September was a booming month for US dealmaking, across the board. We recorded our highest-ever September deal totals in all three major categories — nonfiction, fiction and children’s — with children’s deals rebounding the most after lagging this time last year. Overall, the 593 US deals reported this September was 26 percent higher than the same month a year ago (when the market was down 4 percent overall, and even more […]
On Matthew Shear
St. Martin’s Press publisher Matthew Shear, 57, died on Wednesday after a three-year battle with cancer that was unknown to nearly all of his colleagues. He joined St. Martin’s in 1995, and prior to that he worked at Bantam. The memorial service is tomorrow at 10:00 at Riverside Memorial Chapel (180 W 76th Street in NYC), with the family greeting guests starting at 9:00. The family will also receive guests at their apartment, 895 West End Avenue, Apartment 4A, after the service and all day Saturday. The family asks that those wishing to make a donation in Shear’s memory do so to the […]
Apple Concedes to New Terms with Publishers, Resists eBook App Changes
The Federal Court docket now includes two separate filings from Apple’s attorney on Friday, presenting the company’s revised approach to the proposed injunction. Apple is walking a line between Judge Denise Cote’s guilty verdict and the company’s belief that they are innocent and their hopes to prevail on appeal. Nonetheless, Apple attorney Orin Snyder insisted in his letter to Judge Cote on Friday that the company “has attempted in good faith to listen carefully to the court’s concerns and address those concerns in a forthright manner, even while it pursues what it believes to be strong arguments on appeal.” Our […]