At a famous trade book publishing house, they say, “the monkey pays the bills.” What they mean is that a perennially successful line of children’s books earns its keep and more. This week, though, we learned that a Penguin has a bill to pay, and it’s a whopper – perhaps as much as $90 million to settle [...]
Universities Face Open Access Challenge
As the demand for Open Access (OA) journals and articles increases, so has the frequency with which academic institutions are submitting payments for APCs (article processing charges) to publishers. As a result, universities face a number of challenges new to the academic community. Rob Johnson, founder of the UK-based Research Consulting, tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally what administrators should know [...]
Apple Readies Book Case
The digital dynamo prepares to stand its ground in the ebook price-fixing case coming next month to a Manhattan courtroom. Meanwhile, book industry insiders discover they will have to settle for double-digit growth in ebook sales, after years of triple-digit jumps. “E-books in 2012 accounted for over $3 billion is sales, with a slew of [...]
More Than Books For BookExpo
What to expect at BookExpo America for 2013? Books, of course, from the Big 6 publishers to the growing ranks of the indies. Authors, too, naturally – often seated at the end of long lines of autograph-seekers, and this year, as part of UPublish U, they’re sharing insights on self-publishing with other authors. For a preview, Steven Rosato, BEA Event [...]
Books Make Good Listening
The idea is often advanced that the rise of video on the Web will undermine reading habits – and that in a contest of pictures over words, the words will come out the loser. The jury is still out, but the spoken word has long enjoyed a warm relationship with books, and in 2013, that [...]
Copyright, Content & Congress
Video’s leap from the big screen and the living room onto office computers and tablets has been speedy. In training, sales, and marketing, businesses have taken fast to film and video, typically by including scenes and full-length motion pictures and TV programs during company functions, online education, and elsewhere. At last week’s Digital Hollywood in Los Angeles, a [...]
Reaching Readers
As online merchants displace brick and mortar bookstores, the move throws publishers out of a business-to-business environment and into the arms of consumers. That paradigm shift from B2B to B2C is likely to see emergence of consumer-focused verticals in publishing, with dramatic implications for the way books are marketed. Coming to New York City later [...]
Hot Books Start With ‘Hot House’
With more books appearing every day, finding a book that’s worth the money and time it takes to read becomes a challenge. The publishing business worries over this as much as readers do, and they’ve taken to talking frantically at conferences about “discoverability.” For Publishers Weekly’s upcoming issue, staff writers come to the rescue with their [...]
Publish The Right Way
At the opening of the 2013 Publishing University, presented by the Independent Book Publishers Association, a panel of publishing trend-setters engaged in a lively and informative discussion with CCC’s Chris Kenneally on how to publish the right way. Recorded Friday, April 26, 2013, “Beyond the Click: There’s More to Publishing Than Uploading a File” featured Matthew Cavnar, Vice President of [...]
Who Will Save Our Books?
A bestselling author has sent out an S-O-S for the book trade. Last week James Patterson took out ads on the cover of Publisher Weekly, in The New York Times Book Review, and in Kirkus asking the questions, “Who will save our books? Our bookstores? Our libraries?” Judging by the ensuing media coverage, he achieved [...]
