Mike Shatzkin, industry consultant and visionary, dies aged 77

Unapologetically, his were the biggest, booming-est voice and laugh in the business. But on the morning of 7th November, during a week that for half of America had gone eerily silent, those, too, went quiet—terminally. The owner of same voice and laugh, Mike Shatzkin, so much more than a consultant known on both sides of the Atlantic, had succumbed to a rare form of lymphoma in a Manhattan hospital, aged 77.

Among other endeavours, Shatzkin had founded the Idea Logical Company in 1979 to help improve the publishing supply chain; co-created and hosted the first seven Digital Book World conferences in New York, with Publishers Lunch founder Michael Cader; said a lot of very smart things and some less so—for instance, at the start of the digital age, famously predicting the demise of print books—but always with a candour that made him a cross between a guru and an agent provocateur; boasted clients including Ingram; and co-wrote The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Until Covid earlier this year and the cancer that killed him, energy was never lacking.

Mike came by his career honestly: he was born into publishing. His father, Len—of whom he was inordinately proud—had worked for Doubleday, Macmillan and McGraw Hill; founded a distribution company, Two Continents; consulted; authored a classic book about the industry, In Cold Type, in 1982; and another title, The Mathematics of Bookselling, in 1997. Shatzkin père preceded his son as a trailblazer, teaching him a lot, mostly about distribution.

At the age of 15, through a summer job, Mike first dipped his toes into the industry in the best possible way, as a sales clerk on the floor of a bookstore. An old lefty (that too ran in the family, through his mother), he worked on George McGovern’s ill-fated 1972 presidential campaign. After that, he joined the family firm, and really got rocking and rolling, taking to heart what he learned about what worked and what didn’t (Two Continents eventually failed). When he knew enough, he started Idea Logical. He was entrepreneurial in other ways too: for a time, he turned his fanatical love of baseball into several books and a digital library.

In 2019, the Book Industry Study Group conferred its Lifetime Service Award on Mike, who around that time, seeing what was happening in the greater world, decided to focus on climate change, partnering with Lena Tabori on ClimateChangeResources.org, a start-up website aimed at organising climate facts and activist opportunities. However, he kept his hand in publishing, and his thoughtful blog, the "Shatzkin Files", was read by many.

With the wild hair worthy of Gene Wilder or Harpo Marx (age may have thinned it, but didn’t tame it), the trade mark round glasses and the big presence, he was a singular figure on the book scene. As Martha Moran, his elegant, devoted wife of many years (he was lucky in that way, too) got the word out about his illness through social media, many in the industry wrote or came to his bedside. It will be strange not to see him at conferences, or once again hear that big, booming laugh or voice, so full of life. On the other hand, the imprint that he left on the business he loved and that loved him back was such it will ensure that echoes remain for years to come.