F+W Media, the publishing company focused on core enthusiast communities, is launching a two-day conference focused on “the radically changing commercial environment for consumer book publishers and their trading partners” next January 26 and 27 in New York at the Sheraton. Consultant, entrepreneur and longtime analyst of digital change Mike Shatzkin is leading the programming as conference chair, and he has recruited an advisory board that includes Richard Curtis, Jeff Gomez, Ami Greko, Mark Gompertz, John Ingram, Maja Thomas, Tom Turvey, and many others.
Envisioned as an event by, of and for trade publishers, the new conference’s goal is to provide “actionable plans for new practices that can be implemented immediately–everything from digitization to marketing models and monetization.” Shatzkin (whom I first met at his cool Publishing 2010 conference in London in 2000), started designing events on digital transition back in the early 1990s with an “Electronic Publishing and Rights” events. He says that “no prior digital book conference has focused tightly on consumer trade publishers. Any conference that tries to be agnostic about the publishers it will serve can’t possibly address these things adequately.” He detailed that line of thinking in a recent blog post on how “the digital transition really is harder for trade publishers than for other publishers,” and will continue to discuss the issues to be examined at the conference via his blog.
More detailed programming will be revealed shortly, though for now the organizers expect to cover such issues selling direct to consumers; optimal ebook pricing strategies; using content as a marketing tool; understanding the ebook supply chain; and the future of the agent-author relationship. F+W Media already operates a number of consumer and trade shows within their various communities, and CEO David Nussbaum previously ran Penton Media.
Digital Book World site
Shatzkin blog post