March 25, 2021 Why aren't women moving up in the corporate world? The Invisible Rules will reveal why, and what you can do about it.

May 3, 2021 It’s a Canadian bestseller! I was so pleased to see Don Johnson's new book, Lessons Learned on Bay Street, become the #1 Canadian business biography in this country.

Are public libraries really to blame for the troubles of Canadian publishers? In a recent article in The Globe and Mail, Whyte argued that libraries are to blame because they're loaning books to readers for free, and thereby depriving publishers and authors of the money they deserve. Small publishers like Ken Whyte’s Sutherland House are obviously suffering right now, but Whyte shouldn’t make libraries the scapegoat for the industry’s longstanding financial troubles. First, Whyte is pointing in the wrong direction. Libraries aren’t responsible for hurting the business of publishers; the trouble clearly started with Amazon’s powerful move into the marketplace [...]

Barlow Books and Login Canada have announced a new Canadian distribution agreement. Read more here. https://barlowbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/WebPage.pdf

If you're interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, here's a fresh analysis from author Michael Dan. He uses game theory to make his case that the best solution is mutual cooperation. Check out the review, just posted on Booklife, a subsidiary of Publishers Weekly. Peace activist Dan deftly uses mathematical game theory to examine the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling it “an unresolvable political paradox.” Dan simplifies mathematical models and philosophical concepts while using them to describe the history of the region and its peoples. Through the lens of game theory, he discusses how irrational and inefficient decision-making has persisted over time. [...]

Author Laura Beauparlant is a branding expert and an extrovert. So I was wondering how she was doing at home, juggling her branding business with home-schooling her two boys, age 8 and 12. “I’m working harder than I ever did before,” Laura said, “and I’m a bit Zoomed out.” Last weekend, for example, Laura was supposed to hold a regular brand camp for four clients. It’s an intense in-person two-day affair. Instead, she did five two-hour sessions on Zoom over a week. It worked out pretty well, and the camp was priced a little lower because it was virtual (with [...]

For publishers and just about everyone else, the COVID-19 disaster is a classic snafu – situation normal all fucked up. Consider: Just after we went to print with a couple of spring books, our printer was ordered to close their printing plants in Quebec. Then the bookstores closed. Then Amazon de-prioritized delivering books. People are at locked down at home, and you’d think they have time to read, but most people are understandably obsessed with COVID-19, and the huge number of deaths from this terrible novel virus. All they seem to want these days is a mental break on TV, [...]

Thinking of your book as a brand will guide you every step of the way — from the outline to the title. Read the Barlow Brand Strategy Webinar.

As a publisher and lifelong journalist, I always thought the book was the thing. Publish the book, with the requisite launch party and media attention to drive readers into stores to pick up a copy. But sometimes the book is just the beginning. This was the case with a book we published in the spring called The Collective Wisdom of High-Performing Women. Edited by Bay Street veteran Colleen Moorehead, it is, as the title suggests, a collection of stories from 70 senior female executives that illustrate the key characteristics of leadership today. The launch party, attended by some 400 powerful [...]