Top Ten US Trade Publishers

Eoin Purcell

From Where I sit:
The blog of Thomas Nelson boss Michael Hyatt (one of my favourite blogging CEOs by the way. He has a knack for blogging interesting and important points both for his internal audience and for those outside) has a very interesting analysis of the top ten trade publishers in the USA. It is built, in his words, from:

a proprietary database made up of various point-of-sale databases. It includes all the major retail sales channels. It does not include international, ministry, book fairs, direct-to-consumer sales, etc. If it did, we would be higher on the list because of our robust ministry, school fundraising, and live event sales. Scholastic would also be higher on the list because of their huge book fair business. However, this database only tracks sales through retail channels.

We are now updating this on a monthly basis. As far as I know, we are the only publisher in world who has this information.

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All looking ok for POD??

Eoin Purcell

Good Tidings
Joe Wikert points in the direction of some good news ont he Print On Demand front. Its an interesting CNN/Forbes article that runs with news about On Demand Books [I have linked to these guys before; you might recall they have a video of their product in action] Espresso book manufacturing unit. from the article:

The machine can print, align, mill, glue and bind two books simultaneously in less than seven minutes, including full-color laminated covers. It prints in any language and will even accommodate right-to-left texts by putting the spine on the right. The upper page limit is 550 pages, though by tweaking the page thickness and type size, you could get a copy of War and Peace (albeit tough to read) if you wanted.

Well I hope this does take off and makes books cheaper too but I remain to be convinced that this is the way to go. It may well be an internediate stage but it’s not the final destination.

Enjoying the season
Eoin