Book Fairs

BISG has posted the slide presentations from last week’s Making Information Pay conference. Among the highlights were Hachette Book Group’s COO Ken Michaels impressive account of how the company has rebuilt its structure and processes for the new publishing paradigm–from creating content once in a centralized, standard way that drives all forms of distribution and all parts of the publicity and marketing process to reenvisioning job titles and management structure for new ways of doing business. Andrew Savikas reminded everyone how even a technical publisher like O’Reilly needed to learn by constant experimentation over the past five years, and the […]

In the unscientific lexicon of trade show reporting you will tend to find a limited set of standard vernacular for describing fair activity. Regardless of numbers, there’s either “busy” or “not busy.” This year’s London Book Fair has clearly been voted “busy,” allaying any speculation that last year’s volcanically-challenged show had somehow broken the habit of attendance. As usual, though, the packed first two days have given way to a much quieter third and final day. The weather was unseasonably lovely up until today, which always helps the collective mood, even if you never actually see the sun shine once […]

While executives debated questions of evolution and revolution at the London Book Fair, one of the rare aspiring authors in attendance was describing his participation in an actual revolution to prospective publishers from around the world. Google executive Wael Ghonim, who was one of the people behind the anonymous Facebook page and related efforts that helped galvanize and organize the uprising in Egypt, held half-hour sessions describing his experiences and his plans for REVOLUTION 2.0. Intended for release next January 25, rights are being represented here by Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management (along with his partner Richard Pine, who stayed […]