Mike Shatzkin was not afraid to ask big questions. But he was never satisfied with answers that sounded fancy but were not precisely substantiated or researched in detail. In an essay on the “Paradoxes of Cultural Markets” that I wrote in 2002, for example, I expressed my sincere thanks for his “lively scepticism”, which I gratefully received when I asked for his advice on my arguments.

A year earlier, we had organized a conference together at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which was to deal with the still quite experimental concepts surrounding the term “ebook”. In the very first preparatory discussion, Mike suggested the title: “Frankfurt Big Questions”. Because, he explained laconically, “book publishing is a business that requires looking well into the future.”

I still get a little dizzy today when I think back to that conversation. How are we going to live up to this claim, I asked myself. A little later, however, I read a very precise guide on Mike’s blog:

„Publishers in 2001 face uncertainty every time they sign up for a book, but even more so when they make infrastructure investments. How much effort should go into digital content and rights management? How much investment should go into developing new delivery forms and channels? Is this exactly the wrong time to invest in more warehouse space, or exactly the right time to invest in print-on-demand capability in the warehouse?“

Today, 23 years later, I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to write these questions, word for word, in the presentation of a new conference.

Our conference took place in October 2001 at the book fair, exactly as planned, with brilliant speakers from startup companies, many of whom were no longer around a few months or a year later. Just one month before our conference, on September 9th, Arab terrorists steered a hijacked plane into the World Trade Center in New York – which sent the Frankfurt Book Fair, with a good 1000 US exhibitors, into a state of shock. And the bursting of the so-called “dot-com bubble” in the summer of 2000 was interpreted by many, especially in the book and publishing business, as the end of these digital fantasies.

Mike Shatzkin had a much clearer view. Just a few years later, he told me how he was now working his way through the sales figures of a large US bookstore chain to show its management what they could learn from these figures and translate them into practical measures for better planning when purchasing titles and for presentation in bookstores.

When talking about such innovative approaches, he never forgot to refer to his father Leonard Shatzkin, from whom he learned these extremely pragmatic, application-oriented approaches to the book business.

With these idiosyncrasies, Mike remains the storybook character of a novel set on New York’s Upper East Side. An avid runner (and consumer of Zero Pepsi as his basic elixir), he completed his jogging laps along precisely marked out routes around the blocks of his neighborhood. And just a few weeks before his death, when he was discharged from hospital, he celebrated his return home with meticulous reports on how far he had walked to this or that store.

How much we – the many of us who knew Mike and learned from him – already miss him is more than clear from the countless posts on his Facebook page. Fortunately, Mike has left us a treasure trove in the form of his decade-long “Shatzkin Files” blog on Idealog.com (a wonderful pun on his way of working), which we just have to keep exploring to keep the connection with Mike Shatzkin alive.