On Corporate Realignment

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As great newspapers, magazines, TV networks, and publishing houses dismember themselves around us, it would be marginally consoling if the pink slips were going to those who contributed so vigorously to their companies’ accelerating demise—the feckless zombies at the head of corporate bureaucracies who cared only about the next quarter’s numbers, never troubled to understand the DNA of the companies they took over, and installed swarms of “Business Affairs” drones to oversee and torment the people “under” them. There are floors of these creatures in any behemoth media company, buzzing about each day thwarting new ideas or, worse, having “transformative” […]

Quote of the Week

What If You Saved an Imprint and Nobody Came?

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If you’re in the publishing industry, today’s news about cuts and layoffs and reorgs and whatnot was devastating. Nobody was safe. Not Thomas Nelson, not Simon & Schuster, not Irwyn Applebaum. You start to look around. Who’s next? At Random House, it was clear that saving the imprints was key. Markus Dohle talked about aligning “existing strengths and publishing affinities” and how this imprint or that will be better, stronger, safer. As if that matters. Who really cares if Crown or Knopf or Ballantine or Bantam Dell survives? I’m serious. Who. Cares.

The Future of Publishing

I Have A Dream…The Literary Review of the 21st Century

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I have a friend who is heading off to Paris for a long vacation. I guess she wanted to see how the other half — the people who survive in cold parts of the world — live. My Paris experience was in February, standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower on a cold, clear winter night, the city below me. The halls of the Louvre are astoundingly empty during that time as well. Is this a big, crazy idea that will take a lot of time and effort and smarts? Of course. This isn’t, of course, about Paris. My

Non-Traditional Publishing
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