Junta42: A Funny Thing Happened While I Was Out

I broke some of the most important rules of blogging recently.  Namely, I didn’t blog.  That’s just the way it will always be for me.  My busy-ness level is cyclical.  I have kids.  I have interests outside of work and blogging.  It’s ALMOST Spring here in Indiana, even though it’s mid May.  Do NOT get [...]

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Spending, Inflation, and BOOKS! (On a treemap!)

Without hesitation, follow this link.  Just trust me, it’s really cool and lots of fun.  Here, I’ll provide it again:
New York Times: All of Inflation’s Little Parts
This type of graph is a Vonoroi Treemap.  It’s full of rich data, and though it might take you a minute to figure out what you’re looking at, it [...]

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Line Your Walls with Books for a Better World

I think books are pretty.  Well, many books are pretty, and many are ugly.  What I’m saying is that of all the millions of books ever published, it’s pretty easy to find some pretty ones.
Plus, from what I can tell, you can actually learn a lot from books.  No, seriously!
But, it turns out walls of [...]

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Book Publishers are Competitors to Amazon?

Barely a footnote at the end of a Publishers Weekly column about market share for online retailers versus bricks-and-mortar booksellers was this:
“With Amazon’s growing power in book sales, it’s understandable that publishers may be a bit anxious on learning that in Amazon’s 10-k filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company lists among its [...]

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B&N Now a Content Provider (What About Us?)

Let’s say you’re a company who sells sandwiches.  Really tasty sandwiches.  And you package these great sandwiches and resell them through a variety of great outlets, stores around the world.  Some of these are great big chains of stores.  And they like your sandwiches, buy a lot of them, and resell them to customers.  Been [...]

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Borders to Reduce Inventory, Show More Book Covers

Today it was announced, kinda, that Borders will reduce inventory by 5-10%…more books will be positioned “face-out” as we call it in the book publishing industry.  This will absolutely ruffle the feathers of book publishers.  Borders is one of The Big Three for publishers, along with Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Now, a few things, most [...]

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How to Spread Your Book Brand

Thank you to MAKE for the running guide to the NYC Toy Fair 2008.
One product has caught my eye, specifically because of how a book publisher landed its brand all over the product and packaging, and I mean that in a good way.
The product is the “Speaking Spelling Bee” from Franklin.  As MAKE points out, [...]

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Who Still Sells Books?

Let’s start a conversation here.  Much of the talk about selling books revolves around the same few names, usually rightfully so.  But I know for a fact there are still a LOT of stores out there selling books. 
Ergo, tell me of a retailer who sells books, here are the rules:

Cannot be a traditional bookseller.  B&N, [...]

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Apple Highlights: Best Buy, iPhone, Training(!)

Apple recently release 4th quarter 2007 results, and here’s what caught my attention.
+ Apple had 201 stores open during the quarter.
+ Number of Apple Store visitors leapt to 38.4 million from 28 million prior year in Q4.
+ Apple retail stores generated $1.7 billion revenue in Q4 2007 vs. $1.11 billion in Q4 2006.  Huge jump.
+ [...]

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For Dummies Authors All Bunched Together

A cool article from The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon, a small community which is home to several of our authors: Jim Schell, Bill Chiaravalle, Suzanne Schlosberg, Dirk Zeller, and Barbara Findlay Schenck.
 Some highlights, and insight into the For Dummies brand, from the article:
‘… Deschutes County’s concentration of “Dummies” authors is about 8.6 times higher than the [...]

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