Rolling Back Like many of you, I suspect, I didn’t catch the full license plate of the truck that just hit me, but I’m certain of the first three letters.… BEA reports abound — on paper, wire service, and blog. In our skewed viewpoint they all reinforce the idea that this very big and busy convention was particularly absent many discernible “news stories.” This year’s show certainly confirmed the ineluctable logic of having a show in New York regularly — considered heresy when we suggested it not too long ago — even though the Javits center is a “dump,” as […]

Another Busy Day Stretched thin (like many a convention-goer) across a string of events, panels, conversations, and our own booth, today’s effort at coverage gets necessarily more idiosyncratic and personal. In one sense, the highlight of our own day was clear: our enthusiastic children’s book reviewer Jonah (of Jonah’s Picks) fulfilled a longtime dream in meeting, and having a long and rich conversation with, his literary hero/favorite author Christopher Paolini. Paolini was signing in the autographing area yesterday (and one of the authors aboard Random House’s cruise at night), as the Random booth was stripped clean of ELDEST promotional materials. […]

Which is More Surprising? If at the beginning of the week we had told you that Deep Throat would be revealed, Steve Riggio would call on publishers to raise retail prices, and Oprah would recommend that her viewers read three books (As I Lay Dying; The Sound and the Fury; and Light in August) by William Faulkner, which would you have believed the least? Thus the bar has been set unimaginably high for anything on the show floor to provide us with a large measure of surprise. One Covers a Show The transparent emphasis here is on one more than […]

Are You Sitting Down? Riggio Says to Raise Prices The NYT finally gets around to covering recent industry stats, including those from BISG. There’s only one thing new in here, and it’s buried because they obviously didn’t realize its importance: Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio “said he thought it was time for publishers to consider raising prices. ‘I’m not asking for publishers to start raising prices 10 percent,’ he said, ‘but perhaps a little price inflation in the coming years would not have a deleterious effect on unit sales.'” NYT The Big Picture The most unexpected reason you may […]

Are You Sitting Down? Riggio Says to Raise Prices The NYT finally gets around to covering recent industry stats, including those from BISG. There’s only one thing new in here, and it’s buried because they obviously didn’t realize it’s importance: Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio “said he thought it was time for publishers to consider raising prices. ‘I’m not asking for publishers to start raising prices 10 percent,’ he said, ‘but perhaps a little price inflation in the coming years would not have a deleterious effect on unit sales.'” NYT The Big Picture The most unexpected reason you may […]

Personnel News At Simon & Schuster Canada, Deb Woods has resigned as president, effective July 15, to spend more time on personal interests. She has run the unit since 2002, coming over when S&S bought Distican. As CEO Jack Romanos noted in an internal announcemount: “The last three years have been a time of enormous change at S&S Canada, and Deb has done stellar work managing S&S Canada’s transition from what was essentially a distribution service to a wholly focused sales and marketing company within our family of international companies.” The current senior management team of Alison Clarke, Sheila Haidon, […]