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The remarkable Mike Shatzkin

6 January 2014

Mike Shatzkin is the Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company and is described on its site as ‘a widely-acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry'. This is rather to understate the influence of this remarkable man. Often not taken seriously in the past, as the changes brought about by digital intensify he has become something of a guru for many in the book business.

Shatzkin has never been afraid of making the startling prediction but he draws on 50 years in publishing as a bookseller, author, agent, production director, sales and marketing director, as well as the 30 years he has spent as a consultant to the book trade.
On the Idealogical Company's website over 30 archive categories range from Atomization to vertical and provide an extraordinarily wide-ranging coverage of topics affecting the book world.

Shatzkin has just provide his predictions for 2014 and here they are in brief:

When will we see a stable situation as regards retail shelf space for books? Not yet. What will happen to illustrated book publishers? Is this the year when someone works out handling how-to or art-book material in a digital form that will replace shrinking print revenues? Is this the year when the subscription model finally comes into its own? The merger of Penguin and Random House creates the Big One, so what will this giant company do with its vast resources?

EbooksDigital bookstore selling wide range of ebooks in 50 categories from Hildegard of Bingen to How to Write a Dirty Story and showing how the range of ebooks available is growing. have had a good effect on publishers' margins, so how will they do in 2014 and how will dynamic pricing affect the business? Will this be the year when literary agents experiment with upping their game to control some of their clients whole careers? Is the idea of the celebrity imprint going to go somewhere this year? Most challengingly, has Amazon successfully created two book businesses - their own and everyone else's? And is ebook pricing now presenting an unsustainable model?

Nine places to look in 2014 to predict the future of publishing - The Shatzkin Files

 

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