I suspect many the digital marketer has spent some time (or much time) over the past week or two wrapping up the 2013 metrics, scratching his or head about this or that trend, data nugget, etc. I am no exception and I’ve learned a lot from 2013 — along the way and, now, from looking […]
Poems by Heart from Penguin Classics – Poetry in Your Pocket
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
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?
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
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 […]