The book industry is always evolving, with each month filled with business deals, distinguishing honors, internet memes, and social movements.
Here’s the major book industry news you may have missed in August 2023.
The book publishing industry is one of the most prominent facilitators of human communication. It’s responsible for sharing important information and the stories you’ve grown to love.
Today, the book publishing market is a multi-billion dollar industry, capable of sharing the written or spoken word across the globe—but this hasn’t always been the case. Over the course of centuries, the publishing industry has undergone a number of pivotal events and innovations that have redefined the way that we consume information in all of its forms.
These are the five innovations that shaped the book publishing industry into what it is today, changing the way we read and learn.
In this article you’ll find an overview of what was going on in the book industry in July – financial news, acquisitions, partnerships, how one person can be a prince and a king at the same time and more.
Everyone, who has worked in the book industry for a significant period of time, is aware of the counterfeit books problem. So when you source books not directly from a publisher, e.g., buy used books from the general public, organizations, or even Amazon, you need to check if the books you purchase are genuine.
It is important to distinguish between counterfeit books and international or Eastern Economy editions, which are produced legally. Counterfeit books are produced illegally and are often sold by third-party sellers on various marketplaces, including the biggest ones. Like all pirated copies of copyrighted works, they are against the law.
This article is a summary of the June book industry news. And yes, I have written about the potential acquisition of Simon & Schuster again.
In this article, you’ll find an overview of the major news that both took place in May and caught my eye.
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) was introduced in 1970 to provide a unique identifier for books. At the time, ISBNs consisted of 10 digits. The basic structure of the ISBN has remained the same over the years, although some changes have been made to accommodate the growing number of books being published.
We are used to searching by ISBN as the easiest way to find book data. However, ISBN is a relatively new book identification method, widely adopted in the 1970s.
When Johannes Gutenberg produced the first printed book in the fifteenth century, he probably wasn’t too concerned about book identification – his printed books never carried even his name or publishing date. That wasn’t a big deal because the book industry was in its infancy, and few books were published back in the day.
Voracious readers know that every book has one thing in common. No matter what genre, length, publisher, or art that adorns its cover, every book has an ISBN. That is, provided it was printed after 1970.
You’ve likely noticed a barcode with a serial number on the back of the book you’re reading. It’s easy to think that this is just for the cashier at your local bookstore to swipe, but it’s so much more than that—it’s an ISBN!
US Government Pulled the Plug on Big Five Merger
Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster were about to shrink the “Big Five” of publishing to the “Big Four”. However, the US Department of Justice had an objection to those plans. As is sometimes the way with government agencies, the objection turned into the merger being blocked.