For Sale Sign Up For Perseus

Sep 11, 2015 | News

The business side of books dominated headlines this week. At Perseus Books Group, a “For Sale” has returned to its front lawn, after it went away a little over a year ago. At Barnes & Noble, the most recent quarterly sales report makes for grim reading material....

Best of BTB: Books Invented Everything

Aug 30, 2015 | Podcasts

In 1968, Andy Warhol prophesied that, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” The era of Pop Art and pop music saw the erosion of boundaries between high and low art, as well as the collapse of hierarchy in general. Warhol cannily recognized...

Good News, Bad News For Self-Publishing

Aug 28, 2015 | News

The book world this week is full of news from the ranks of “indie” or self-published authors: Good news for one children’s author, and bad news for several who feel cheated. And for another, the news is definitely in shades of grey. “A potential class action lawsuit...

Digital Age Not Golden For Writers, Artists

Aug 27, 2015 | News

On Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, author Steven Johnson pointedly asked, “How is today’s creative class faring?” His own analysis of available data drew Johnson to conclude that the much-threatened “creative apocalypse” hadn’t materialized. That contrarian...

Best of BTB: Altmetrics Under The Microscope

Aug 23, 2015 | Best of VOC, News

Scientific research seeks answers to questions large and small – from the composition of atoms to the age of the universe. While scientists, funders and institutions may value research for its own sake, they are practical, too. The answers that research yields can...

“Secretive” Amazon Brings Out The Worst

Aug 21, 2015 | News

What do the capitalist titan Jeff Bezos and communist kingpin Kim Jong-Un have in common? Very likely, they have absolutely nothing in common, but we will never know because both Amazon and North Korea are kingdoms of secrecy. This week, owing to a lengthy New York...

A Textbook Case of Copyright Infringement?

Aug 14, 2015 | News

Three leading education publishers have brought a copyright and trademark infringement suit against a U.S.-based textbook reseller for allegedly importing and selling “pirated” foreign editions of popular textbooks in the U.S. market. Filed in...

Business Readers In Search of Rigor And Relevance

Aug 9, 2015 | Events, Podcasts

What do readers hire us to do?  The editors of one of the world’s most recognized and respected business publications asked themselves just that over five years ago.  Answering the question inspired a transformation of the organization and a reinvention of the brand....

Mystery Author Flees Publisher

Aug 7, 2015 | News

Authors discontented with their publishing deals are nothing new. Mark Twain enjoyed jabbing at publishers like a kid tossing stones. He said once that robbery of a publisher wasn’t a crime and was even rewarded in heaven with two halos. This week, a particularly...

Scholarly Publishing Looks To Close The Gender Gap

Aug 2, 2015 | Podcasts

In a 2013 series of articles, Nature documented “the dismaying extent to which sexism still exists in science. In the United States and Europe, around half of those who gain doctoral degrees in science and engineering are female — but barely one-fifth of full...