Mike Shatzkin, Colorful Publishing Industry Guru, Dies at 77

Mike Shatzkin, a charismatic publishing consultant who counseled industry figures on nearly every facet of the trade, from inventory management to supply-chain quandaries to the seismic paper-to-digital transformation of book selling, died on Nov. 7 in Manhattan. He was 77.

His death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of a rare and untreatable form of lymphoma, said his wife, Martha Moran.

With a bushy head of hair, a tendency to shout (he was practically deaf) and obsessions that included baseball statistics, Diet Coke and climate change, Mr. Shatzkin was a quintessential Renaissance man of Midtown Manhattan, where he lived and worked.

As the founder of the Idea Logical Company, he mentored publishing executives, served as a go-to expert for reporters and was a popular speaker at conferences. His blog, The Shatzkin Files, was an essential read for industry insiders — if they could keep up with his output. (“I type 100 words a minute,” he once boasted.)

“Mike was one of a kind,” Michael Cader, the founder of Publishers Marketplace, an industry news publication, said in an interview. “He was enormously likable. He was an enthusiast. He was an optimist. He was opinionated, and he was outgoing, so he shared those opinions, whether you wanted to hear them or not.”

Mr. Shatzkin was among the first in the industry to metaphorically shake publishers into confronting the digital disruption of their old-world enterprise.