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Table of Contents

• ↓ The Shatzkin Files
• ↓ A personal thought on the passing of publishing legend Tom McCormack
• ↓ Checking facts with players who are still in the game
• ↓ Big disruption hit book publishing before AI showed up
• ↓ Bindery Books: A Way to Restructure the Book Publishing Model
• ↓ The problem with bookstores is the problem for bookstores
• ↓ Top Alternatives to idealog.com

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"This is the blog of Mike Shatzkin, Founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company. Posts cover trade publishing economics, digital disruption, self-publishing, rights and licensing, book retail, and the structural changes reshaping how books reach readers. New essays appear as industry events warrant. Read the latest: What Library Ebook Lending Costs Publishers in 2026. Browse recent posts below or use categories and the archive to dig into earlier analysis."

"The passing of publishing giant Tom McCormack makes me recall the interaction he had with my father, Leonard Shatzkin, from the very beginning of Tom’s publishing career."

"The bios say he was hired as an editor at Anchor Books, Doubleday’s pioneering trade paperback imprint, in 1959, that being McCormack’s first job in publishing. The Anchor line had been “invented” by Jason Epstein in about 1953. Leonard Shatzkin, from a position called Director of Research, expanded the Doubleday sales force dramatically — it was by far the biggest in trade publishing — and also invented another trade paperback line, Dolphin Books, in the late 50s. Epstein moved on to Random House in about 1958. So, what I know, without being able to ask either Tom or Len for further details, is that Tom arrived on the Doubleday trade paperback scene just after its charismatic founder had left the company and when my father was Doubleday’s leading pioneering executive."

"At the time, and for a long time thereafter (maybe even continuing today), the standard method for managing publishing economics inside a company was the “title P&L”. That method of scoring made each title its own business. You added up all the revenues attributable to a title, subtracted the cost of producing the books and the royalties paid, and assigned a share of overheads as a percentage equal to what overheads are supposed to be overall. If that accounting showed the title with a profit, it was deemed to be successful. If the costs including overhead exceeded the attributable revenues, then the title was “unprofitable; it “lost money”."

Key Topics & Focus Areas for idealog.com:

The Shatzkin Files

A personal thought on the passing of publishing legend Tom McCormack

Checking facts with players who are still in the game

Big disruption hit book publishing before AI showed up

Bindery Books: A Way to Restructure the Book Publishing Model

The problem with bookstores is the problem for bookstores