The planning process for the main Digital Book World program — about 40 discrete programming elements using about 150 speakers over two days — has always benefited from a “Conference Council” brainstorming meeting. This year’s iteration is later this week. We’ll have attendees from all of the Big Five, several other publishers, agents, and assorted industry players who can help us understand the concerns and initiatives across the waterfront of industry interest.
Sometime after we started doing this in 2009, we added a pre-meeting survey component, asking our Council members to register their opinion about the topics we knew we wanted to consider. That survey was primarily a tool to guide the very fast-moving conversation we have at the Council meeting.
This year we have added a “public” version of the survey. That turned out to be a really good idea. This post is a list of programming ideas that either came directly from the public survey or were inspired by suggestions made there which are very likely to become important parts of Digital Book World 2016.
I’m excited about the idea of doing an entire track on “Making Investments Pay Off”, which is a persistent concern in the world we live in where new business models and new initiatives are being tested all the time. After years with basically the same business model and workflow, publishers are trying new things all the time now without knowing exactly how to make them commercially beneficial. We can see at least four areas where publishers are putting in a lot of effort, but could probably benefit from a discussion about how to measure, monetize, and manage their efforts.
End-user databases (collecting names)
Digital marketing campaigns (publishers are hiring the talent; now, how to make effective use of it)
Building author brands (aligning interests; knowing what you want; making it pay)
Research (it is cheaper and more effective than ever, but how does it pay off)
With all the discussion that persistently takes place around how much of a threat self-publishing does or doesn’t constitute to the establishment (a conversation into which I waded last week), we should host a discussion on the future of self-publishing. I know I’d want Amazon on such a panel, if they’d join. Some other players who could shed light on self-publishing’s future are Kobo, Smashwords, Ingram, a literary agent, and a self-published authors. (This panel has Jane Friedman’s name written all over it as the moderator!)
We’ve never convened a panel of Human Resources people to discuss how what they look for has changed across job functions. That would be an interesting discussion.
With all the new topics, ideas, and startups that seem to arrive on a daily basis, big companies must exercise discipline around what to spend time on and what to avoid. That’s another topic that could be a very important one, if we can find executives willing to speak to it. What are the rabbit holes? What are the things a company should not spend time discussing or exploring in the current environment?
As publishers adjust to a commercial environment where intermediaries are more problematic (partly because they become fewer in number and partly because those that remain become increasingly powerful) but direct sales opportunities become easier to develop and manage, new things are possible. Publishers can now develop online courses and proprietary subscriptions, if they have the right content for them. Tools — like Aer.io — are being put in place for them to sell digital content or hard goods direct with minimal investments in tech. Two publishers, Sourcebooks with “Put Me In the Story”, and Quarto with “This is Your Cookbook”, have recently created custom book lines — using technology to personalize existing content — that are largely made possible by direct selling. Direct selling is a leading edge of change that enables product types and customer relationships that would never have been possible in the past. More and more publishers will want to know what’s being done and how it might apply to them.
And as the far-flung world becomes reachable from anywhere, English-language publishers in each English territory have unprecedented capability to sell to all the other territories. Getting the Most out of the English-Speaking World — what you need to do, or do differently, to optimize sales in US, UK, Australia, S Africa, India, etc. — is now a topic that just about every English-language publisher can benefit from.
All my readers are invited to participate in the DBW topic survey. Thanks to all of you who have already contributed your thoughts and ideas. As you can see, we’re paying attention.