SCOTT LUBECK
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In this short introduction, Book Industry Study Group (BISG) Executive Director Scott Lubeck welcomes attendees to the 8th Annual Making Information Pay program. Along the way he shares the on-going mission of BISG: to create a more informed, empowered, and efficient book industry supply chain for both physical and digital products.

KENNETH MICHAELS
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“Publishers as 21st Century Content Providers”
Kenneth Michaels, EVP & COO, Hachette Book Group
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What is required to be successful publishers today, to connect consumers with our content as widely, creatively, and effectively as possible?

Creating a customer-centric company that is multi-product, multi-channel, and content focused requires new areas of mastery for publishers. Kenneth Michaels will explore how publishers need to adapt to succeed, with many activities new to traditional publishing that change how we work, how we process, the tools we use, the underlying architecture, and how we prioritize strategic investment.

BILL KASDORF
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“Toward Agility & Efficiency: Best Practices for ‘Future-Proofing’ New Content”
Bill Kasdorf, Vice President, Apex Content Solutions
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The realities of today’s rapidly evolving, multi-platform book business has turned future-proofing your content from an impossibility to an imperative. The costs of constantly playing catch-up—in money, time, and customer (dis)satisfaction—make it essential for publishers to work smarter. This presentation will discuss practical, standards-based strategies that book companies can implement today, without major technology investments, to streamline editorial and production workflows. By following the steps outlined, companies can create bankable content that adapts to new demands without costly and constant retrofitting.

ANDREW SAVIKAS
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Learn how O’Reilly Media transformed its publishing infrastructure from a traditional print-focused workflow to a flexible, modular and digital-first toolchain driving profitable growth across multiple digital and print channels. Adapting lessons learned from Web standards, software development and 20 years of online publishing, O’Reilly has built a set of systems supporting real-time publishing on a global scale. In this presentation, you’ll learn about the technical, business and organizational challenges O’Reilly faced along the way, and how the practical strategies and solutions they’ve developed can be of benefit to all.

JOHN KONCZAL
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Sterling Commerce, an IBM Company
John Konczal, Worldwide Industry Executive, Sterling Commerce
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MADI SOLOMON
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“Smart Content: The Importance of Semantics in Publishing”
Madi Solomon, Director of Content Standards, Pearson
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The way we organize our information is shifting from the book-centric table of contents or bibliographic citations to a more dynamic approach that directs us to content that may never have been initially intended, or previously encountered. Smart content is content that is equipped with structured data that allows it to soar across domains, user groups, profiles, and knowledge maps to reach readers in non-linear ways. Through the guidance of taxonomies and the exploitation of classifications, smart content no longer waits for the wisdom of the reader, but seeks the most appropriate reader for its content. This session will explore how semantics and reliable metadata act as agents to broker such relationships.

BRETT SANDUSKY
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E-Books bring the promise of easier, cheaper and faster distribution in a digital supply network free of physical limitations. But they also create new challenges related to discoverability in an already crowded marketplace. Fortunately, digital products contain internal exploitable data which can vastly improve the discoverability and sales across all formats. Knowing where these pockets of data lie, along with how to manipulate and fit them into a production workflow, is key to developing better sales. This presentation will show you why…and, more importantly, demonstrate several easy, no-fail methods you can implement today.

Many publishers see a trend that may be, like e-books a couple years back, an early indicator of sea-change for our industry. While book sales are becoming more and more elusive, opportunities to sell licenses of content fragments for websites, apps and derived books are growing. Consequently, the mismanaging of rights associated with these fragments can have severe impacts on a publisher’s brand and bottom line.

Unfortunately, figuring out who owns all rights available to a work often requires costly research and negotiation that can eat up potential profits before they’re realized. Often, this discourages publishers from responding to rights licensing requests at all. Those who do struggle to track collections and expend costly resources on managing revenues. And when they do license content, they struggle to track collections and expend costly resources on managing revenues.

Under direction from BISG, rights experts from the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and MetaComet Systems, with the help of The Idea Logical Company, have researched the extent of this challenge across the industry. It is hoped that results from this research can lead to recommend best practices for rights management.

During this three-part presentation, Heather Reid (CCC), David Marlin (MetaComet), and Mike Shatzkin (Idea Logical Company) will present the results of BISG’s research, describe the challenge, and detail what they believe are the next steps toward an industry-wide solution.

TARA CATOGGE
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“Attention Shoppers: Building Opportunity Based on Customer Behavior Data”
Tara Catogge, Senior Vice President of Inbound Supply Chain, Levy Home Entertainment
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Mass retailers face the challenge of converting general shoppers to book buyers. In this presentation, Tara Catogge, an executive at the leading supplier of books to mass merchants, will deliver a data-rich examination of category trends and provide examples of how data-based marketing tools can be used to attract consumers at point-of-sale. Tara will also enumerate some of the challenges suppliers and retailers face together as they embrace a culture of collaborative, data-driven decision making.