The Idea Logical

The Idea Logical Company is helping several publishers apply POS data available from published sources to improve sales and reduce returns through constructive analysis. Several projects were begun in the first half of 2001 with some very promising early results. The Idea Logical Company has a special interest in the opportunities and challenges presented by digital technology to publishers, especially book and journal publishers. Since co-organizing two Electronic Publishing and Rights Conferences (sponsored by Publishers Weekly and Knowledge Industry Publications) in 1992 and 1993, we have long been involved in this aspect of the business. From 1995 to 2000, Idea Logical Founder and CEO Mike Shatzkin was the co-chair (with Mark Bide of Rightscom in Great Britain) of VISTA's "Publishing in the 21st Century" research program, which encompassed the creation and publication of extensive research papers, the presentation of semi-annual conferences in New York and London, and the leadership of The Editorial Board, a global team of journalists, consultants, retired industry leaders, and academics with special knowledge of publishing. A great deal of "value chain" analysis was produced by this program, which we believe is critical to understand the ways that digital technology affects existing practices. In 2001, we organized the Frankfurt Book Fair's "Big Questions" Conference, which attracted an audience of over 200 publishing executives from all over the world to spend an entire day before the Frankfurt Book Fair discussing the industry's future. Idea Logical's strategic clients have ranged from industry giants (at one time or another, just about all of them) to promising start-ups like SoftBook, one of the first hand-held "ebook readers" and now owned by Gemstar; Sprout, the pioneers of digital print-in-store technology; and OverDrive Systems, leaders in the development of digital publishing and content management processes. More recently, we have worked with SealedMedia, an exciting young firm with a "better mousetrap" for Digital Rights Management, and Publishing Dimensions, leaders in providing the technological understanding that enables publishers to cope in a multi-format digital world. For The Butterick Company, now Soho Publishing Company, we created a whole new business from scratch that sells the books of all publishers to the retail network served by a pattern and crafts company. We have helped develop brand-extending publishing opportunities for Butterick, Family Circle magazine, Variety, and the Discovery networks, among many others. We have created our own pioneering information Web site, BaseballLibrary.com, that has more than 3 million words and 20,000 Internet pages of baseball history. BaseballLibrary.com is a magnet for baseball content; for example, we have excerpts from about 100 books on the site. And every year we sell a few publishing projects as an agent. We believe that dealing with publishers regularly from the perspective of a creative supplier informs our understanding of all the other things we do.