'Tales of Two Markets': Publishing Industry Issues and Observations

The architecture of the publishing industry today is changing amid “abundant” content and digital developments. Philip Jones and Andrew Albanese discussed the trends in a session led by Porter Anderson, Publishing Perspectives. Read More

Lee & Low: Diversity Is Not Created Equal

  By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson Editor-in-Chief Lee and Low is a children’s book publisher that specializes in cultural diversity. And in its survey of diversity issues in U.S. publishing, the company has handed us a much-needed chance to discuss something healthily difficult: the issue of gender in the publishing workforce. Lee and Low created and executed a large… Read More

Seeking Our Reflections in Writing: The Diversity Within

On Diversity and ‘Those in Whiteness’ Thrall’ Whiteness is…more of a genre than anything else. This is the Erik Anderson, author of The Poetics of Tresspass. He’s writer in residence and director of the Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In an essay at Salon, White bro reading: Yes, I’m reading men… Read More

'Public solitude': No One Can Tell You The Best Way To Create Your Work

Here be ‘unprofessionals’ “Writing offline” seems almost an odd phrase today. You’ll find it—online—in Words Unwired, a commentary by Lorin Stein in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. We understand, of course, when he gets to the even odder term, “unprofessional,” that Stein, The Paris Review editor, is writing in support of the book he has edited,… Read More

2016 #FutureChat: Make a wish

How do you like 2016 so far? Not that long ago, in a #FutureChat not that far away, we asked you what you considered to have been the high points of 2015 for publishing. Today, we’re looking for something a little more (or less) than a prediction: What would you like to see become a… Read More

In 2016, Adult Coloring Books: Only Half-Good For Publishing

Color Us Skeptical One of the things the book publishing industry produces best is confusion. Its gray areas (not unlike its Grey areas) are fogs of speculation, partial truths, gossip, and misty-eyed hindsight. Among the most beloved notions this year has been the idea that print books entered a renaissance in 2015. In bookseller’s dreams, consumers… Read More

BitLit expands bundling in audiobook partnership with Findaway

‘Freedom across formats’ Fast on the heels of announcing last week’s deal for ebook bundling with Springer, Vancouver-based BitLit today is announcing an expansion to include audiobooks as in its bundled offerings. A partnership with US audiobook distributor Findaway is the key to this late-year development. Based in Solon, Ohio, Findaway is bringing audiobook bundling of… Read More

'Closing the last mile to the customer's doorstep': Ingram buys Aer.io

‘I’m committed for years to come’ If a startup acquisition in the publishing space has ever looked like a match made in digital heaven, the Ingram Content Group-Aer.io deal announced today is it. (Our news story on the acquisition by my colleague Philip Jones is here.) “Effectively, the team is staying together,” says founding c.e.o. Ron Martinez. No carpet strewn with… Read More

Your 2015 high points

Let’s do the time warp again Then Amazon switched to per-page payouts on KDP Select. Right? And then Amazon changed it to different per-page rates for various territories. And then Amazon opened a physical bookstore. Run for your life! (If the latest Shelf Awareness account of reactions to that bit of bricks and mortar is right,… Read More

A message to #FutureBook15 from #AuthorDay

To work together, not as antagonists The Bookseller’s Author Day conference opened this year’s FutureBook Week on Monday (30th November). It was the inaugural staging of a conference expressly meant to bring together publishing professionals, traditionally publishing authors, and self-publishing authors. Our term for the conference’s intent is “issues-driven,” by which we meat that it was not… Read More