Things change. Sounds glib, but reality is that nothing remains as it is forever. So why are we taken aback when many start to question the very social fabric of publishing – the book fair?
We didn’t go to BEA this year, not because we didn’t think it worthwhile, but simply because we felt a holiday break may prove more rewarding. We didn’t miss the frantic scurrying from stand to stand, the eating on the floor, the missed or late appointment and the sore feet? We missed the people one only sees at these events and of course Fred Bass’s Strand party. But life moves on and so should BEA, Frankfurt and London. We remember sitting in Frankfurt as the economic crunch was happening and thinking we were on some weird Titanic that refused to stop partying despite the reality of the world outside.
Just as the UK Booksellers Association has realised with their annual conference that the agenda moves on and there is always a need to question, revisit and improve. The BA conference may not work moving forward, or in its new form, but it has no god given right to do so just for the sake of it. It will be a pity if it now failed, but it has been doing so for some years, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.
It would be interesting to add the newsprint column inches devoted to Hay on Wye compared to the London Book Fair? Some may say that you can’t mix business events and consumer ones, but anyone who opens their eyes will tell you different. It’s a Book Event and should be managed, run and presented as one and remember there are only two people that matter, the creator who pours the effort in and the consumer who pays for it.
Showing posts with label BEA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BEA. Show all posts
Monday, June 01, 2009
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Letter from America
The BEA lived up to its reputation for creating lots of news and the digital word was certainly hot on most people’s lips. So what caught the eye?
The Espresso Book Machine Model 1.5 machine sat boldly under the Crystal Palace for all to see. It is currently eight feet long and five feet wide and attracted much attention. It has a smaller brother apparently on the way but has still to drop in price to make those heads really turn. A StarBOOKs or Costabook could certainly be interested in serving books on demand as you wait for that skinny latte but this one is heading off to a library. Although it has 200,000 out-of-copyright books through the Open Content Alliance, 2,200 World Bank titles, and Arabic-language books from the Library of Alexandria, these are hardly titles to die for or to read over a doughnut and it remains to be seen whether the company can collate a sufficiently large base of attractive content.
Ingram Digital is no longer a ‘venture’ but a group. Interestingly the news that it had struck up a deal with VHP (Macmillan US) went largely unrecorded. In the digital world this was a significant story and leads one to speculate exactly what the global strategy is for Bookstore and MPS. However, it is good news for Ingram and VHP in the US.
There is a new digital appointment within the trade environment who enters not from music, newsprint , sales, editorial but from the major digital force that is Elservier and it is going to be interesting to see how Hachette-Livre is going to move now.
Rights reversals continue to bubble along. A close colleague used to say ‘ be careful what you wish for’. Publishers need to be wary of changing established practices that have stood the test of time just because the end format is changing. It is highly unlikely that any but the highest tier of authors would sign away their works for what would be clearly a lifetime plus. What could happen is the emergence of new term and revenue rules which would be easier to reverse and activate. This could lead to some works enjoying a second wind or even a first one.
We now have DADs (Digital Asset Distributors) which is different from Digital Asset Management and so on. The forthcoming Klopotek conferences in New York and London have certainly gathered all the usual suspects plus those industry gurus Shatzkin and Bide and should be a very interesting. I will be speaking as a DAD and hoping to introduce the wider digital family of Mum, son, daughter etc.
The Espresso Book Machine Model 1.5 machine sat boldly under the Crystal Palace for all to see. It is currently eight feet long and five feet wide and attracted much attention. It has a smaller brother apparently on the way but has still to drop in price to make those heads really turn. A StarBOOKs or Costabook could certainly be interested in serving books on demand as you wait for that skinny latte but this one is heading off to a library. Although it has 200,000 out-of-copyright books through the Open Content Alliance, 2,200 World Bank titles, and Arabic-language books from the Library of Alexandria, these are hardly titles to die for or to read over a doughnut and it remains to be seen whether the company can collate a sufficiently large base of attractive content.
Ingram Digital is no longer a ‘venture’ but a group. Interestingly the news that it had struck up a deal with VHP (Macmillan US) went largely unrecorded. In the digital world this was a significant story and leads one to speculate exactly what the global strategy is for Bookstore and MPS. However, it is good news for Ingram and VHP in the US.
There is a new digital appointment within the trade environment who enters not from music, newsprint , sales, editorial but from the major digital force that is Elservier and it is going to be interesting to see how Hachette-Livre is going to move now.
Rights reversals continue to bubble along. A close colleague used to say ‘ be careful what you wish for’. Publishers need to be wary of changing established practices that have stood the test of time just because the end format is changing. It is highly unlikely that any but the highest tier of authors would sign away their works for what would be clearly a lifetime plus. What could happen is the emergence of new term and revenue rules which would be easier to reverse and activate. This could lead to some works enjoying a second wind or even a first one.
We now have DADs (Digital Asset Distributors) which is different from Digital Asset Management and so on. The forthcoming Klopotek conferences in New York and London have certainly gathered all the usual suspects plus those industry gurus Shatzkin and Bide and should be a very interesting. I will be speaking as a DAD and hoping to introduce the wider digital family of Mum, son, daughter etc.
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