My Story of Hope for the Publishing Industry

I spent yesterday bouncing between publishers and agencies like a pinball, doing what I do; helping authors and publishers find their readers. One publisher at a time. One person at a time. One conversation at time. One convert at a time. The usual for me. Except things feel different now. From my first cup of […]

Join Me at PodCamp Philly 2009

Are you wondering if your business can benefit from the use of New Media Tools, Strategies and Tactics? Are you already involved in New Media and now you’re wondering how to optimize your strategy and growing network to raise market awareness and drive revenue? Then the best deal in town this weekend is 2009 PodCamp […]

Publishers, Authors, Media and Marvel on Twitter

This morning Jocelyn Kelley followed me on Twitter. Twitter-logic gets me scratching my head and asking, “Who is this @jocelynkelley and why does she care what I have to say?” To find my answer I click the link on her Twitter mini-bio and find out that, ahhhh, she’s a literary publicist in the Boston area. […]

One For the Books

BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR’s On the Media. I’m Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I’m Bob Garfield. The new media are thriving. The old media are dying. That seems to be the theme of our program from week to week to week. But, of course, it’s much more complicated than that because increasingly the old and new are merging into one another.

This week, we’re devoting the program to the oldest of old media – books. Chances are you’ll be buying one or two this holiday season, but where and how you’ll buy them and in what form are open questions.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Nowadays, some 60 percent of all books are not bought in brick-and-mortar bookstores; they’re purchased at airports or checkout counters, Wal-Mart or Costco, Toys R’ Us or Williams-Sonoma, or online.

In case you were wondering, 11 percent are purchased from Amazon.com. The rest are bought at bookstores, but mostly the big chains. The membership of the American Booksellers Association, which serves independent bookstores, has dropped from more than 5,000 to roughly 1,700 in the last decade. Should we decry the state of publishing today?