At the intersection of publishing, technology, and marketing.

Poems by Heart from Penguin Classics – Poetry in Your Pocket

Poems by Heart - Poem Home Screen

A secret to please keep quiet: I am not just a crass marketer or cold-eyed analyzer of publishing strategy. I am those things, or like to think I am anyway. But, truly and firstly, I love books and reading. (Shhhh…might ruin my rep.) So, this is a post written with the love of reading at [...]

When Elephants Mate: Thoughts on the Potential Penguin Random House

Random House Plus Penguin Equals Question Mark

Why anybody thinks they will produce a gazelle by mating two dinosaurs is beyond me. –Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence For the title of this post, I opted to replace “dinosaur” in Peters’s quote because I don’t believe that either house is extinct or even approaching extinction. Like elephants, they’re just big [...]

Can Publishers Scale Verticals?

Word and Film Screenshot

Several years ago in a very large conference room I heard Mike Shatzkin give his “The End of Trade Publishers” presentation. Despite working for a trade publisher, I thought it was terrific. In my opinion, Mike didn’t get everything right, but he sure was shaking the right trees. He placed great emphasis on consumers and “communities [...]

Publisher Strategies and Devastating Opportunity Costs

Random House Author Portal

I was never much of an economics student. In truth, I was pretty bad. I did, however, grasp the idea of opportunity cost. The first sentence of Wikipedia’s definition sums it up wonderfully for me: Opportunity cost is the cost of any activity measured in terms of the value of the next best alternative forgone [...]