Best of BTB: ‘Obama Book Club’ Meets At BookExpo

White House administrations generate books like leaves grow on trees. This video was recorded only 18 months into the Barack Obama presidency, and already the titles were flourishing in publishers’ catalogs. Two of the most anticipated such books – THE PROMISE:...

BTB #315: Google Grants For Non-Profits

Too good to be true. That’s what you’re bound to think when you hear that $10,000 a month in free online advertising is available to any and every qualifying non-profit. If you’re among the growing number of publishing houses operating as...

Best of BTB: “50 Shades” and More of Self-Publishing

Recorded earlier this summer at uPublishU, the day-long self-publishing pre-conference program of BookExpo. Featuring Jenny Pedroza, co-founder of the Writers Coffee Shop; Mark Coker, Founder, Smashwords; Sandra (Sandy) Poirier-Diaz, President, Smith Publicity,...

The Week Ahead 08.17.12

Crown Publishing Group gets a make-over, but how extreme? PW’s Rachel Deahl gets the inside story from the make-over artist herself. And in reviews, what’s wrong in America’s downtowns – and why these crimes are committed by architects and bureaucrats, not thugs and...

BTB #312: What You Should Know About “Open Access”

“Open Access” (OA) is the single catchphrase for an innovative set of business models expressly created for the World Wide Web. Though the term sounds monolithic, it sweeps up a great many approaches to a single challenge: Sharing knowledge. On Wednesday, September 5,...

The Week Ahead 08.10.12

It’s been a grey summer for publishing: The runaway bestseller 50 Shades of Grey and related titles in the E.L. James trilogy from Vintage have reportedly sold over 10 million copies. That sensational figure suggests there’s a ready-to-ride bandwagon for other...

BTB #311: A New Job Description for Books

On the leafy campus of Yale University, the view from the summer session at the Yale Publishing Course was of lush chestnuts and towering ivy. Tranquil as it seemed, warned a lecturer, danger lurked for book publishing businesses. That startling call to attention came...

The Week Ahead 08.03.12

What did the bookstore clerk say to the customer? What are YOU doing here? The painful truth is that bookstores, and bookselling more generally, have never faced more parlous times than our own. But the business doesn’t lack for diehard loyalists and the battlefronts...