This presidential election year, stagnant wages and growing income inequality are issues that concern voters and candidates on the left and on the right. In publishing, based on the mixed results of a Publishers Weekly survey released this week, those concerns could...
Old habits are hard to break. Just ask the Big 5 trade book publishers who just can’t seem to walk away from a business dependence on print books. Sales reports and reader surveys agree that readers continue to enjoy print book over e-books. The reasons for that...
No one likes to see you bringing problems to the workplace – unless he or she is a reference librarian. Once upon a time, reference librarians assisted patrons to find something – usually in a book. In 2016, the job is to work out what the problem is, then find the...
In journalism, August is as close to a slow season as it ever gets in the newsroom. This week, though, that changed in a hurry – with flood waters inundating Louisiana; war raging on in Syria; and fires roaring through southern California. Even the book world came...
With the New York Public Library setting the standard, more and more public librarians will begin spelling “books” with an “e.” Public libraries, of course, have offered e-books on loan for a number of years, but few readers – and not very many publishers – were ever...
“The future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed.” That acute observation from author William Gibson, the cyberpunk pioneer, captures the predicament of our age, when new technologies overlap with the many that are already established. The lucky...
Latest sales reports from the Association of American Publishers show clearly the direction for e-books: Down. “Are publishers finally getting a handle on what’s driving the decline? After the first quarter of 2016, I would think, yes, they would have,” reports Andrew...
Comic books – and graphic novels, their book trade cousins – are no laughing matter. The characters between these covers are usually troubled souls, and the situations they confront range from disturbing to dire. The scenario for the comic book business is anything...
In an unconventional political year, no one should expect conventional party conventions. As the Republican gathering in Cleveland this week gives way to the Democratic meeting coming to Philadelphia next week, that is the only reliable prediction. Politics and...
The fundamental quarrel for publishing and technology is the struggle between culture and commerce. This left brain/right brain dichotomy, says analyst Thad McIlroy, explains why the book business continues to fight an uphill battle in the Digital Revolutionary War....
