Overview

Making Information Pay 2010: Points of No Return

Exploring what happens as digital share grows and printed share shrinks

Book publishing is not one business and digital transformation affects different segments in different ways. It also affects different job functions in different ways. Those effects are the subject of Making Information Pay 2010.

One thing’s for sure: digital change is inexorable — and the direction is one way. We will not suddenly find the number of bookstores growing or the e-book market shrinking. Even those publishing segments that have traditionally been ahead of the curve — professional, academic and educational, for example — will find digital delivery accelerating as we get close to a world where everybody has a computer in their hand all the time.

But it is likely within trade publishing that change is about to be truly disruptive. Whether new book sales reach 25% digital inside of three years, as some expect, or whether it takes a year or two longer, can anyone doubt that at that point…

• …editors will be taking much more care to deliver a digital book with features and capabilities that excite an increasingly sophisticated e-book consumer?
• …marketers will be working with a slew of new capabilities to reach readers through new web destinations that spring up for digital reading, and even through other ebooks themselves?
• …sales departments will be needing a whole raft of new techniques to make sure books are on the “eye level shelf” at e-book sites?
• …production departments will be spending as much time and effort crafting and perfecting digital book presentations as they do now on print book presentations?
• …distribution and supply chain functions will be coping with downsized warehouses and renegotiated print contracts to adjust to lower print book throughputs?

Through a series of short, pragmatic presentations, Making Information Pay 2010 will address the technological “points of no return” currently facing our industry and identify the new technologies dictating advanced ways in which books—both digital and physical—are being acquired, produced, distributed, marketed and sold.

See the Schedule for speaker information as it becomes available.

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Hannah Johnson from the blog Publishing Perspectives interviews Mike Shatzkin, Making Information Pay 2010 conference organizer, about this year’s program.

Further Information

Professionals from all facets of book publishing attend Making Information Pay to learn about the latest innovations and technologies driving today’s book supply chain. The event’s proven track record of pragmatic, actionable presentations attracts a broad base of attendees who need to know what to do today to stay abreast of changing market trends.

See the Attendee FAQs for further information.