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The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Mike’s father, Leonard Shatzkin, introduced a different way to sell backlist in 1955, by which Doubleday automated backlist replenishment for the stores in response to inventory counts the reps reported after their visits. This technique propelled Doubleday from one of many publishers to an industry leader, particularly for backlist.

Mike Shatzkin • The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Publishers and the Smiling Curve

stratechery.com stratechery.com

Scott Belsky Talk at South Park Commons

Often designs from frustration
Right now, greater skill is being brought by compute and developing a democratization of many things (code, design, etc.). Because of this, taste will probably be the most important skill
Taste is derived from culture and overlap of industries
Because of that

The question will be this: what does the “established” publisher have to add to the marketing and distribution of a title? As long as there are lots of decentralized bookstores, publishers must call on them, take orders from them, and ship to them. But as and if the ecosystem becomes more online, more e-book, and physical retail becomes more Amazon

Mike Shatzkin • The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Curators, Curators

It has become popular to say we live in the information age, and we need curation to help us sort through the mess. But thus far, the conversation around “curation” has been too focused on the content and not enough on the structure. We seem to have accepted the job of the curator as providing a product review, a list of links, a... See more

Sari Azout • Re-Organizing the World’s Information: Why We Need More Boutique… — Mirror

The fundamental disruption of the Internet has been to turn this dynamic on its head. First, the Internet has made distribution (of digital goods) free, neutralizing the advantage that pre-Internet distributors leveraged to integrate with suppliers. Secondly, the Internet has made transaction costs zero, making it viable for a distributor to integr... See more

stratechery.com • Stratechery by Ben Thompson

Markus Dohle, CEO, Penguin Random House, says the top 4 percent of titles drive 60 percent of the profitability. That goes for the rest of them too:

Elle Griffin • No One Buys Books

Libraries tend to buy from wholesalers. Whereas many publishers offer no discount incentive for libraries to buy directly from them, the wholesalers offer a range of other services libraries want around making books shelf-ready. Publishers do promote directly to the libraries and are comfortable selling to them through the wholesale channels.