Audiobook Subscriptions Test Margin Limits at Major Chains
The all-you-can-listen model that transformed music and television has reached the audiobook market with a pricing logic publishers did not choose and cannot easily…
Industry
The Reader TimesThe businesses, decisions and market shifts shaping the international book trade.
Latest in this section
Page 5
Print Runs Tighten as Inventory Discipline Drives Reprint Decisions
The first printing, that old act of faith, has become an act of arithmetic. Across the trade, initial print runs have tightened to levels…
Post-Pandemic Warehousing Deals Reshape Distribution Networks
The warehouse, publishing’s unglamorous heart, has spent five years quietly renegotiating its relationship with everyone it serves. The pandemic-era shocks that sent storage costs…
Late-Order Culture Strains Holiday Production Schedules
The book trade’s most expensive habit has a name, and the name is ordering late. For all the industry’s celebrated inventory discipline — the…
Subscription Fatigue Hits Book Boxes
The subscription box, publishing’s gift-economy darling, has hit the wall that every subscription economy eventually hits: the customer who already has too many subscriptions.…
Supply Chain Insurance Costs Fall Alongside Freight Rates
The least visible cost in the book’s journey — the premium that insures its journey — is finally coming down. Supply-chain insurance rates, which…