Catching Up With BookExpoCast ‘09
When Publishers’ Lunch reported that Perseus president David Steinberger advocated turning markets into conversations at BEA, I railed against him on twitter for being 10 years behind the the publication of Perseus’ own The Clue Train Manifesto. Steinberger, it seemed, just boarded. Weeks later I am catching up with vidcast of the event at BookExpoCast.com (part2). Steinberger comes off a lot better than was reported in news. The session itself is skippable. Can we please stop talking about viral-marketing as an activity. Please. Pretty please. But I still owe Steinberger an apology.
A session worth listening to is Gary Vaynerchuk’s session on independent bookselling. And old news but also worth catching up with is Mike Shatzkin’s session called ‘Stay Ahead of the Shift: What Product-Centric Publishers Can Do to Flourish in a Community-Centric Web World‘. There is a point in the session when Shatzkin asks what happens when the public publishes more books than publishers do? Umm. I think that is when being a publisher doesn’t mean anything. We need a new name for our new role. The public is already publishing more than than the publishers are. As with much of what Shatzkin says his clear view is conflated with his judge of distance. A lot of what he is says is going to happen, is happening now. The distinction between offset and POD production is irrelevant now. Still worth your time though.
No Comments Yet