CMPTO: A Bookish Vision of the Future (A Newbie’s Account)

If you’re like me and my publishing pals, nothing incites more tech titillation than an evening with other bookish folk chatting about technology and publishing. Enter CMPTO (Code Meet Print Toronto), a gathering of print people and tech people in an unholy union to talk about innovations, challenges, and everything in between. Basically, throw a bunch of writers, publishers, and tech geeks in one room, add a few interesting speakers, sprinkle with drinks and snacks, then let simmer.

This week’s event was my first foray into the CMPTO meet-ups, so here’s a recap from the virgin eyes of a CMPTO newbie.

The Future Is Now #CMPTO

Imagining the future of books and literate culture is a great pastime these days. Can we picture books as being anything other than what they are? Even though we see the disruption of digital all around us we still wear blinders and imagine e-readers as analogs for paper books. But really the book and its attributes have been under constant reimagination from the beginning. Which begs the question: where to next?

I Leave You with This Graph

Day 241: The End.

I started my internship with an interview, sweating in a blazer in Noah’s office with 35-degree weather outside. Must. Look. Professional. Must. Stop. Sweating. Noah was reclining comfortably, dressed in a blue polo shirt asking me about my history. They’d heard talk of my battles with the demon king. They’d read stories and heard from references about my competency with swords and magicka in defeating and conquering this beast known as… Excel.

Thinking B2C: Is Scaling Back Imprints Enough?

In a post on Monday, Mike Shatzkin advised publishers to reconsider the number of imprints they currently have as they shift focus from B2B branding to B2C branding. Shatzkin reminds us that imprints were originally used to brand titles to buyers, librarians and media—not consumers. Having an established imprint helped a book get its foot in the door and increase the chances of wider media coverage and stocking.

It seems that somewhere along the way some of us forgot this.

So what are the branding opportunities and challenges presented by imprints, and what are the implications for publishers?

BNC CataList 2.0

We’re coming up to the first anniversary of the BNC CataList launch, and to celebrate we launched CataList version 2.0. This one goes out to the legions of devoted CataList users who have taken the time to share their thoughts and ideas on how CataList could be improved.

This release included a number of user-requested features and functions. The full details on how to use all these new features can be found on our What’s New in BNC CataList page, but here’s a brief recap of the new features that are available on the site today.

Using Custom Reports in Google Analytics to Inform Marketing Decisions

Measuring the value of your marketing efforts is a constant struggle for businesses because there are so many factors that indirectly affect sales. On top of that, online marketing can drive offline sales and offline marketing can drive online sales. All of these factors make it difficult to really know what is influencing a sale. What then is a publisher to do?

Monique Sherrett of Boxcar Marketing leads us through Goals and Custom Reports in Google Analytics to give you insights into the two things that the people holding the marketing purse strings care about: Sales, and Things That Lead to Sales.

Bullish on Content APIs

How do you make your content available to all those new mobile devices? How about linking your Content Management System with software X? What about linking your content more closely with your metadata? Perhaps the overall question is how do you make your content agile? There are numerous answers to all of these questions, but one way to get your data out there may be to make it available via an API.

Last fall at one of the CMPTO events Pearson did a presentation on some of their newly available content APIs and one or two of the projects being built using their APIs.