Here’s how we’ve been putting together the program for Digital Book World. First, I dreamed up a list of panel “topics” that I thought touched the key issues and concerns facing general trade publishers today as a result of digital change. Then we ran that list past our illustrious and helpful Board of Advisors, who […]
Stay Ahead of the Shift: What Publishers Can Do to Flourish in a Community-Centric Web World
Speech given at BEA 2009. Focusing on the changes that will take place in publishing in the next 20 years. With a look back to the last 20 years, we are able to look forward and predict not only how publishing will be in the future, but also how information will be shared.
The publisher’s evolving role
Michael Cairns has a really good post today that distills a lot of thoughts I have had over the last several years into a clear formulation: that the publisher needs to serve as a “digital concierge” for its author. Three years ago, Brian O’Leary, Ted Hill, and I did a study of marketing spend for […]
Digital change: what’s an independent bookseller to do?
The question of how to plug the independent bookseller into the digital revolution is a knotty one. Nobody has really “solved” it. Two of the smartest guys in the UK, Francis Bennett and Michael Holdsworth, tried to tackle this question in a report for the Booksellers Association in a report published in 2007. While they […]
The Book Business Ain’t The Music Business
Len Vlahos of the ABA is the latest to take on the noble but very difficult task of encouraging independent booksellers in the digital age. Independent booksellers face a challenge similar to that of publishers adjusting to the change we’re facing: the skill sets and predelictions that are useful for what they’ve been doing don’t […]