On Tuesday, Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos confirmed that the online retailer plans to open more physical stores. Amazon opened its first physical store, Amazon Books, in Seattle in 2015; later this year, the company will open a bookstore in San Diego. “Bezos...
The winds of change are blowing at BookExpo America. This week, the publishing industry’s top trade show arrived in Chicago for the first time since 2004. Hardly anyone considers the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan to be comfortable, though the book business may...
In recent months, e-book sales figures have flattened or fallen. A pair of e-book sales initiatives announced this week could provide a boost to publishers’ digital fortunes. Shelfie, the book discovery app that allows readers to essentially digitize their print...
Over a half century of business transformation and reinvention, one figure has persisted in the book trade. Len Riggio, the founder and chairman of Barnes & Noble, built a bookselling empire that remains the nation’s largest – even if it also the last of its kind....
The path leading to the marble steps of the United States Supreme Court building demands patience from all parties. When at last the journey ends, the justices offer no consolation other than their opinions. On Monday this week, the long road ended for the Authors...
It was a week of comings and goings at the London Book Fair 2016. For one thing — and no one minded — the clouds and rain early in the week departed in time for the highlight days of the show. But talk of another leaving gave many publishers pause: In...
The US Congress writes the copyright laws of the land, and the interpretation is left to the courts. “Fair use” is a potential defense where copyright infringement is charged, and a judge must measure four explicit factors when assessing possible harm. Fair use gets...
The world of e-books is like the American west – full of wide open spaces and populated with pioneers. Names like Open Road, Diversion and Brown Girls Books dot the map. Open Road Integrated Media, established in 2009, releases about 200 e-books a month, focusing on...
An epic tale? Well, hardly – but the rise and fall of the e-book may the year’s most critical story for trade book publishers. What lies behind the decline in e-book sales is hardly mysterious – one of the big 5 publishers has flatly pointed to “new retail sales...
What’s surprising about public libraries today is that they are more about offering access than acting as archives. In the US, too, the public library is increasingly a community’s home away from home. Ahead of the biannual Public Library Association Conference,...
