Symptoms publishers are suffering from the COVID-19 crisis incliude headaches over sinking revenues and lost orders and gut-wrenching pain from layoffs and canceled projects.
Interview with Brian O'Leary
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The novel coronavirus is giving us all lessons in subjects we never before would have considered of wide public interest, from policy debates over epidemiological models to the intricacies of supply chains for toilet paper and hand sanitizers.
For publishers, the nightly homework assignment in this hard-knock classroom never changes – prepare a survival plan for the next day. In a recent survey of more than 200 stakeholders from one end of the publishing workflow to the other, the Book Industry Study Group has documented the symptoms publishers are suffering from the COVID-19 crisis – headaches over sinking revenues and lost orders and gut-wrenching pain from layoffs and canceled projects.
“Virtually everybody that we talked to had taken steps to reduce spending, and many were talking about postponing titles or projects,” notes BISG executive director Brian O’Leary. “And about one out of every 10 respondents said that they’d shut down their business, which is pretty sobering in this time.”
