I attended my third O’Reilly webinar today. Titled What Publishers Need to Know About Digitization, it was led by the very savvy Liza Daly. They said they’re working to get the session’s recording up on the site, so it should be up there soon. This was, by far, the best webcast I have attended. Though the one on Why Publishers Should Care about SEO was ok too. I do wish Daly and crew had spent a little less time with the 101 intro stuff (how to scan something) and a little more on the monetization part that they flew through. In fact, I’m still unclear on where any of the monetization is coming from in any of Daly’s 3 examples. I’ll have to go back and look. The next webcast is Twitter for Business, in case you’re interested.
But today was really just another session of 100+ people asking questions (and getting the answered!), that showed just how many cool tools publishers have at their disposal. They just have to be creative. I know that the holiday season is predicted to be a slow one for books, but after today’s session I can see the potential and though things may change a little and new formats, distribution channels may emerge, I really think that books and publishing are going to be just fine.
Much to the dismay of Jeff Gomez, whose book I plan on reviewing later this week.
I discovered Twitter some time ago and have been hooked ever since. So I am maintaining a list of all the “bookish types” who, I follow, on Twitter. The list isn’t very organized, yet. But it’s brimming with publishers,book designers, book media folks, publicists, bookshops and peppered with an author here and there. If you know of anybody else, in the publishing/book world, that I should be following, please let me know. Also, please let me know of any other online rosters of this type. I haven’t found one, which is the impetus in developing my own.
I’ve had some great conversations online because of it and am looking for more. Some of the tweeters do a great job of using the medium. Others, like myself, are still a bit newbie and it shows. But we’re learning and following!
You really just can’t tell if all of the home schooling folks’ reviews were good or bad about this book. In reality, there isn’t much of a relation between “best-seller” and “good cover design”. You just have to look at the Best Sellers Lists in all the papers to see that, which is a shame. But this is a fun little time water built on the Amazon API though. Can you pick a best-seller simply by looking at the cover?
Ann, over at Books on the Nightstand, has produced a post that capitalizes on what I think is one of the coolest ideas floating around right now… build your own virtual book conference. Basically, she came up with a theme (books she likes right now) and she put together a collection of online videos with the authors, readings and other notes. So now you can click your way through her conference, titled Pixelated, at your own pace.
I want to do this. This could be really fun and you could tie in all kinds of content from various social media. All I need is a theme and some free time… hmmmm.
