In my Pocket Reader app, I stored a September article from BBC News as much for the article’s title as its content. That title? “When Is A Bestseller Not Necessarily A Bestseller?” I think that’s been the burning question in publishing for the past ten years. Bestsellers haven’t entirely lost their meaning, but they’re not relevant the way that they were twenty years ago. Back […]
Business Musings: Trainwreck November Edition
Three days before I sat down to write this blog post, I finished reading Drama High by Michael Sokolove. I clutched the book to my heart, and thought, no one will ever see books like this again. Then I mentally slapped myself. I had slipped into traditional writer think. Drama High was published by Riverhead Books in 2014. Riverhead was once a literary imprint of […]
Business Musings: Price Wars and Victims
The traditional publishers are screaming about Amazon. I’ve learned over the years that when someone screams about something, they’re doing so because they feel some kind of pressure, some kind of pinch.
How could traditional publishers be feeling a pinch from Amazon? After all, in the United States, Amazon is selling more books than any other retailer. Why would that hurt traditional publishers? Is it hurting traditional publishers?
The Business Rusch: Advertising, Print Editions, and Traditional Publishing (Discoverability Part One)
The latest buzz word in the publishing industry is “discoverability.” Everyone’s worried about the “mountain of crap” that self publishing will (has?) brought into the industry—including self published authors. Everyone ignores two important facts: one person’s crap is another person’s beloved book, and publishing has always produced books in great volume. The newly merged Penguin Random House (or Randy Penguin as one of my favorite […]
The Business Rusch: The Global View
I’ll be honest with you: when I planned a topic for my blog last week that wasn’t US-specific, I was thinking that the hits on my site would drop off. After all, the Thursday Business Blog fell on one of the US’s big federal holidays, Independence Day (aka the Fourth of July). I figured I’d get a quarter of my usual attendance. Instead, I got […]
The Business Rusch: The Year of The Bookstore
A week ago Sunday, one of our local booksellers, Sheldon McArthur of North by Northwest Books, tossed me the April 22, 2013 Publishers Weekly. The issue has a good review of my upcoming Kris DeLake novel, A Spy To Die For, but it turns out that wasn’t why Sheldon gave me the PW. He gave it to me to see my reaction to the ad […]
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