The New Sleekness

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Category: Legacy Publishing

What Ozzy Taught Me About Multi-Platform Publishing

I Am Ozzy is the autobiography of one of the craziest rock stars of all time, Ozzy Osbourne. While I was a fan of MTV’s The Osbournes back in the day, I wasn’t ever really a diehard fan of his music. Save for an occasional ‘Crazy Train’ karaoke indulgence. When the book came out, I [...]

Continuing the Conversation…

Those of you who attended yesterday’s Publishing Point meetup, “In Conversation with John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan,” got to see a side of Sargent that wasn’t carefully scripted in a Publishers Lunch letter or blog post. Rather he continued his tradition of being accessible and personable with the publishing community and I, for one, appreciated [...]

Macmillan Blogs…And The Heavy Lifting Begins

Wow, cool. Macmillan started a blog! (Incredibly well-designed, too. Wonder who did that…) First of all, I think I speak for a lot of people by saying, good on you, John Sargent. This is absolutely a move in the right direction, and I can’t think of an executive better suited that Sargent for speaking plainly [...]

On Production.

I came of age, career-wise, in the late 90′s, as an art director at J. Walter Thompson, a multinational advertising agency. The 1990′s were an interesting time to be in an art department. The desktop publishing revolution was changing the way art directors and designers went about their work: x-acto knives, paste-ups, and letraset lettering [...]

Publishers: You Need a Corporate Social Media Strategy

Wow. So that happened. I don’t have a lot to add to the Team Macmillan or Team Amazon sides, but I do think this is a good time for us all to touch base about a little thing called corporate communications. Publishers: In times of crisis, the social media tools you have invested time into [...]

Doin’ It Digital

After reading Ami’s article about essential digital positions in Publishing, I thought about how most people in our digi-nerd positions, especially in publishing, come from another neck of the business woods like marketing or production.  Why is that? How did we get there? For me, I’ve been asked more than a few times ‘well, how [...]

Three Jobs Publishing Houses Need to Fill in 2010

In this era of layoffs and pay freezes across the industry, it might seem silly to talk about new positions that publishing houses should be looking to fill. I can hear you all groaning from here: with what time, exactly, should we be interviewing these people, and which pile of doubloons should we cash in [...]

New Year, New Job, New Blog

Two announcements to kick off 2010. First, check out the new blog. I’m launching The New Sleekness with other smart, bookish types to fill a hole in publishing punditry: voices from the boots-on-the-ground folks actually working directly in that sweet spot of publishing and technology. I hope you’ll add us to your RSS Reader. And [...]