Schnittman's OptiQly acquires Shatzkin's Logical Marketing

Mike Shatzkin has sold Logical Marketing, a digital marketing consultancy he founded with Pete McCarthyn and Jess Johns, to a technology start-up called OptiQly run by Evan Schnittman, formerly of Bloomsbury.

No details about the deal were disclosed but OptiQly said it hopes to help its clients “enhance discovery of authors and books”.

Two of Logical Marketing’s founder, Pete McCarthyn and Jess Johns, are joining OptiQly as chef product and director of marketing, respectively, with immediate effect. Shatzkin will act as a consultant.

In a blog, he said: "My interest and involvement in trade publishing is a permanent condition, so I'll definitely still be consulting, helping fledgling publishers and tech start-ups with a publishing angle as well as a few mainstay companies that value my knowledge and insight." 

However, he added that he plans to devote his "business development" energy to working on climate change, which will include "some initiatives I'm not quite ready to talk about yet, but it largely means seeking out experts on various aspects of the subject and helping them put together book projects that will spread the messages that are most critical to humanity's survival, which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be the sure thing it was when I started my working career."

Shatzkin is also writing about the book business for Oxford University Press's What Everyone Needs to Know series with Robert Riger.

Schnittman, current c.e.o. of OptiQly, said: “This is a unifying step with the intention of providing more – and more focused – value to Logical Marketing clients via expertise, scale, and software.”