All Episodes
Libraries Welcome E-Book Lending Thaw
A January thaw is upon us – Not in the Northeastern US, where temperatures have been in the single digits for days, but certainly in Libraryland, where a major trade publisher has announced an innovative e-book lending program for libraries. Coming just ahead of...
Presidential Legacy in Independent Publishing
As presidents end their term in office, they focus on the legacy they leave to their successors. The Independent Book Publishers Association has announced today that long-term president Florrie Kichler is retiring from her post on July 1. Over the five years that...
Managing Copyright Today
Digital change—and the resulting explosion in ways of combining and using content—puts the increasingly complex issue of rights and rights management at the heart of today's publishing business. Understanding and managing copyright in the 21st century, a...
House Moving in Digital Times
Whenever you move house, it’s an opportunity to clean, as well as a big job to pack. As the Penguin/Random House merger advances, the physical move may prove to be far easier than the digital transition, observes Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly senior writer. "How...
Book Sales Secret Sauce – Metadata
Once locked away exclusively in the card catalogs of libraries, metadata in 2013 has escaped to the Web where in digital form, it describes the contents and context of data files. And because almost every form of published content today is created in digital form,...
2012’s Books By the Numbers
In the New Year, it’s time for endings and beginnings, along with some reckonings. The numerically-inclined among the editorial staff of Publishers Weekly have turned in their tallies for 2012. There were more #1 bestsellers than ever over the last 12 months,...
Copyright to the Rescue!
As European economies struggle for financial footing at the opening of 2013, ministers in Brussels, London, Paris and Berlin see hope in the digital future. According to the European Commission, the digital economy in Europe is expected to grow seven times faster than...
Publishing Pioneer Seeks Knowledge Unlatched
Scholarly book publishers, like their siblings in the journal world, today face growing financial stress along with mounting demands by academic audiences for free or low-cost content. The search is on for sustainable business models that accommodate and address these...
Book Discovery: Fitting the Pieces Together
Every second, two books are discovered on Goodreads, the largest site for readers and book recommendations. What must happen to get a book to that magical moment when a reader sees it and says “I want to read this”? In his keynote address to the 2012 PubWest...
Best of BTB: Self-Publishing Gets Respect
As the success of 50 Shades of Grey makes clear, the book business has made piece with the self-published author. Now one of the best-selling authors in history, E.L. James first made her work available to readers via non-traditional, self-publishing routes. James is...
Best of BTB: Winning Publishing Strategies
There’s no business like show business to serve as a model for book publishing, according to industry veteran Bruce Harris, who spoke this summer at the Yale Publishing Course. “When you're doing a show, a group of talented people come together. They focus on a...
Best of BTB: “50 Shades” and More of Self-Publishing
Recorded 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, Incorporated;...