On Saturday I attended the CBA Super Saturday conference for indie booksellers. I sat in on a discussion that sparked a recurring dream of mine: Finding Hidden Money. Bronwyn Addico and Mandy Brouse (the winner of this year’s inaugural Chase Paymentech Young Bookseller of the Year), from Words Worth Books gave this talk and they were mostly talking about running events and the way that events should be run. First of all the similarities to the idea of providing local news in a hyperlocal model came to mind.
We the Supply Chain
The sixth annual AMR Supply Chain Top 25 report has just been released and it has me thinking about the role that BookNet Canada plays in the publishing industry trying to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it impacts business.
Say Hello to the Copyright Modernization Act
New copyright legislation is always a big deal. Not only does it stand to impact most of our daily lives, whether we’re loading music to listen to on the bus or trying to read a new ebook , but it is also an industry game-changer. For book publishing, a “copyright industry” that’s also trying to bridge the gap between print and digital, the current Copyright Act (unchanged since 1997) is sometimes like the little brother on crutches who can’t keep up when all we want to do is run towards the ice-cream truck (play along with me and imagine that the ice-cream truck is the exciting world of digital distribution).
App vs. EPUB: Which Is Best for Your Book?
These statements probably sound familiar:
“I need to digitize my entire backlist! I’m converting everything to ePub. Find that book from 1973, cut the spine, scan it…”
“I’ll only make apps—no ePub for my books. Apps, apps, apps: I love apps.”
I hate both of these statements. They lead publishers who maybe aren’t so tech-savvy to believe that it has to be one or the other, or, even worse, that they have to digitize their books no matter what. But, why ?
New ONIX Tools...Now with 3.0
Today we are happy, no ecstatic, to announce the release of one new ONIX converter and an upgraded BNC Excel Template to ONIX converter. This might not be exciting to everyone, but to us metadata junkies this is a little like a Data Festivus. So exactly what do we have?
IDPF Digital Book 2010: A Short Recap
Earlier this week (a lifetime at Laguardia ago) I attended the IDPF’s Digital Book 2010 at BEA in New York. The show was very well attended (700’ish in attendance) with a great international representation and a large number of Canadians in attendance. It was nice to see some success stories and hear where things are heading with regards to epub and IDPF. Parts of the conference felt a little ‘sales-y’, but there was enough implementation and technical information to keep me, and I think many others, interested. Here are a few of my takeaways…
Confluence As a Web-Based Publishing System
In conferences and sessions we often discuss XML based publishing workflows…a concept I love, but I term I hate. Concept — content that is single sourced, marked up and is used to drive a plethora of end uses (i.e. pbook, ebook, web content, app, etc…). Why do I hate it? It is scary, maybe not to everyone, but to enough people in the “content business” that the term itself can often kill any hope of implementation.
Here’s why we need solutions that take the scary out of XML publishing workflows.
Back to the Future
The other night I went to a panel discussion billed as the Future of the Bookstore and I have been trying to collect my thoughts about it ever since but not sure I have yet. Predicting the future is a tough business and maybe not a fruitful one unless you’re Ray Kurzweil or an investment banker.
The Reader
Post-BookCamp Brain Explosion
This past weekend, the second-ever BookCamp Toronto brought together publishing types of all sorts for a day of discussion, discovery, and drinking (the latter starting as early as 10:30 am, in Michael Tamblyn’s now-legendary Kobo Q&A/ summer wine tasting). The BookCamp “unconference” model is an intriguing contrast to the usual progression of talks/presentations/limited discussion time.
