Booknet Canada

BookCampTO, my personal favourite (un)conference, rolled around again this past weekend. High fives to the organizing committee of Erin Balser, Mark Bertils, Alexa Clark, and Hugh McGuire — great work all around!

So, why do I love BookCamp so much?

The short version: When you remove the barrier of formality from a conference, you get more out of it.

The longer version:

• It’s about more than the session leader
  Everyone in attendance carries equal weight and can freely share ideas and ask questions.  I can sit in John Maxwell’s session and field questions about the Book of MPub, and Nic Boshart can sit in mine and rant about ISTCs — and we’re all happy about it. Everyone can participate and everyone can get something out of it.
• I can let my inner 6-year-old with ADHD come out without anyone giving me dirty looks
  Tweeting during a session? Leaving to go to a different room? Talking to someone in the hallway? It’s all cool at an unconference. That being said, I noticed this year that there seemed to be less of a under riding conversation than there was last year. I think it points to higher engagement rates within the sessions. Most of the laptops in the rooms were being used to skype people in from out of town, not tweet or check email out of boredom. Instead, people were talking and sharing ideas — crazy.
• I love scheming
  It’s often the conversations that happen in hallways or over beers that lead to great ideas. I have a list of at least 10 people I’m supposed to be emailing over the next few days about some elaborate plan we came up with at BookCamp. That’s what I’m thinking about now more than anything I talked about during a session. Yes, that can happen anytime, but there’s something about BookCamp that brings it out in people.

I think that magic is the lack of formality. Sitting around a classroom in jeans and a t-shirt seems to put us all in a comfortable place where we can actually speak openly and honestly.

Favourite moments from 2010:

• Alternating between wine and coffee at 11 am while Michael Tamblyn fielded questions about Kobo, and Noah and I tried to keep our jittery coffee hands from spilling wine everywhere. It wasn’t that he brought us wine, it was that the wine broke the ice and made everyone in the room comfortable enough to ask whatever was on their minds.
• Getting all the data geeks together in one room to talk about ONIX. We’re totally nerdy and we’re ok with it.
• Ranting about the disconnect between publishing and outside life (sports in my case) with Erin Balser (and anyone else who would listen).
• Watching this year’s MPub cohort present alongside John Maxwell. A year has gone by really quickly.

I’m heading to Halifax for BookCamp Halifax on June 5, 2010. See you there?

By Chelsea Theriault

Chelsea is BNC’s newest super-intern. She recently finished her course work for SFU’s MPub program and will be with BNC for the summer. You can follow her on Twitter @chelseathe .

BISG’s Making Information Pay 2010: Points of No Return was only yesterday morning, but it still feels like a dream. That may have to do with the inevitable daze of my first trip to NYC, but it may also be chalked up to the high speculation-factor of most of the morning’s talks. Not like that’s a bad thing, though; speculation can be our friend! From Mike Shatzkin’s survey which asked publishing types to predict the future of their jobs, to advice from George Lossius (CEO of Publishing Technology) about why technological investments will be crucial, overall the morning was a giant “nine-month memo” (as mentioned by Bruce Shaw from Harvard Common Press) of predictions to revisit later.

One of the resonating, over-arching themes of the day (aside from defining when/where/what is the “point of no return”) was that the future is agile. In order to “re-invent the links in the supply chain”—a recommendation offered by BISG Executive Director Scott Lubeck—for an increasingly digital industry, collaboration is key. Yet this won’t be possible unless the conception of supply-chain practices and publishing roles changes from the legacy-based “this-is-how-we’ve-always-done-it” to the more agile “what-will-help-us-do-more-tomorrow.” While there’s no single answer or right way to make this happen, multiple speakers mentioned an “XML-early” production workflow for easier format conversion, as well as described integrating publishing processes by blurring the lines between editing/sales/marketing.

Overall, it felt like MIP was encouraging everyone to become a newbie again: to ask questions, figure out what everyone else is doing, and try everything out.

A few of us from BNC made the trip to Manhattan for this year’s Making Information Pay from the Book Industry Study Group . This morning conference is always jam-packed with information, and this year was no exception. An overall theme was that we need to rethink the supply chain as we know it — it’s no longer really a chain, more like a complex puzzle. Throughout the day it was called the supply rubix cube, the demand chain, and probably something else I don’t remember: I’m going to go with supply chainmail for the time being.

In the first half:

Mike Shatzkin, Founder & CEO, The Idea Logical Company

Mike reviewed and analyzed the pre-conference survey, which was meant to provide an understanding of how people in publishing view changes to their company and to the industry as a whole

Highlights: 62% of respondents believe Twitter is a fad

My opinion: While Twitter itself may be a fad, it highlights a desire for real-time, human communication and a breakdown of traditional means of corporate communication. People don’t want to be marketed to, they want to be talked with.

Kelly Gallagher, Vice President of Publishing Services, RR Bowker

Kelly showcased new data from PubTrack Consumer, displaying current consumer trends and comparing those to last year.

Highlights: We have to stop calling it the supply chain, and start thinking of it as a demand chain where the consumer is king or queen.

My opinion: I think publishers have been doing this forever. The audience is always taken into account when a book is published. The difference now is that digital formats are forcing us to take a closer look at the context surrounding what we produce. Since digital formats are out of the comfort zone of a lot of publishers, it requires more thought and effort. It’s still a supply chain – there are simply more end points now.

David Guenette, Senior Analyst, The Gilbane Group

David gave a talk about 7 essential processes that will help publishers prepare for digital transformation.

Highlights: If you start in a neutral format, flexibility will be easier later on.

My opinion: this is extremely important, but often explained in a way that makes XML seem too complicated and impossible to implement. This is the talk that led to me tweeting: “We need to start explaining start with XML in a way that everyone understands. Won’t be adopted otherwise. #mip.” There are simple and easy solutions out there that even the smallest, least techy publisher can adopt, so we need to start talking about those solutions.

Jabin White, Director of Strategic Content, Wolters Kluver Health’s Professional & Education

Jabin talked about his experience going through major process changes within his company: what they did well and what they would, well, do differently next time.

Highlights: Knowing when to change is as important as knowing how to change. And connect change to the people.

My opinion: This was a great presentation. Jabin wasn’t afraid to be open and honest about his experiences. Often, we feel like we have to change to keep up with the rest of the industry, but in the end you need to do what’s right for your company at the right time.

George Lossius, Publishing Technology Plc

George focused on how publishers can decide to invest in technology when everything is changing so rapidly.

Highlights: Systems that are key to current business can stifle innovation.

My opinion: This is great reinforcement to what I believe: sometimes you need to be willing to drop something that isn’t working, recognizing that it might be preventing you from moving forward.

After the break:

The second half of the morning focused on changing roles within publishing houses. Each session looked at one role: editors, production managers, marketing managers, and the sales team

Highlights:

• The book as an object is just a presentation of the content.
• Store content without any form attached.
• Workflow shifts: from a push model, to a centralized, collaborative pull model Bad ebook formatting is not acceptable; consumers are going to start calling us on it.
• The role of the sales professional has changed from relationship management, to inventory management, to data management.

Slides from the presentations will be posted shortly. I’ll update with location when I get the information.

Update: Slides are up! Check them out on SlideShare .

Were you at Making Information Pay? What did you think?

The number of book professionals and students gathered at Harbourfront today for Giving It Away, the Humber College/BPC eighth annual Book Summit suggested that with or without BEC, there’s a strong desire to congregate and share ideas.

My heart was really warmed by this. I promise that no Friday evening libations are influencing my sentimentality - from my stone-sober vantage, it’s a real pleasure to be a part of an industry that is seeking collaboration to survive the challenges and embrace the opportunities of what is frankly kind of scary.

Whether or not free is really the preferred price point of the next generation of content consumers - and I take issue with that assumption, as I think that convenience and early access trumps $0 price tag almost every time - there are certainly changes that are influencing the way we create, read and sell books.

What I loved:

• The focus on audience participation in the workshops. It’s so great to be able to be a part of the discussion. Sarah MacLachlan and Brent Lewis did a particularly great job at this.
• Lack of doom and gloom. No one went on a Chicken Little rant, no one wore one of those homemade The End is Near signs or the symbolic equivalent. As Johnny Temple said, we have 3-4 months of whining and then it’s time to just move on and deal with it. It kind of feels like the whining is already done and the rolling up of sleeves is well underway.

What I would have liked to hear more of:

• Higher ed. These are the publishers who have been hit hardest already and who will continue to feel the pain more acutely than trade pubs for at least a while yet.

  I had an unsettling conversation with an educational publisher who told me about digital white boards that enable pictures to be taken of text (printed text!) and then shared and manipulated. All of sudden my sense that it’s harder to pirate books than music became less certain.

• How the Book Rights Registry might actually help get publishers and authors paid. I know it’s scary, I know there are a lot of implications. But for an agency like Access Copyright, it might also be really useful. And for independent presses thinking about retaining global rights (now or in the future), it will make getting paid a heck of a lot easier…

My favorite swag - the Access Copyright mini-football. Fun, free and fair!

Congrats Annie, Cynthia, Stephanie, Jennifer and everyone else involved on a job well done! Looking forward to next year - but please, please, can we have wireless? It’s key not only for those jonesing for their fix like me but also to keep everyone who couldn’t be there in person there in spirit.