TOC in NYC; O’Reilly Confab Hails Digital Era

by Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 2/12/2008 7:27:00 AM

O’Reilly’s second annual Tools of Change for Publishing conference opened yesterday in New York City with a series of keynote speakers who challenged publishers to embrace opportunities in a new digital era that has fundamentally transformed the nature of reading, the delivery of content and, indeed, the role of the publisher altogether. Held last year in San Jose, California, this year’s TOC made its debut in the center of the publishing industry, which looked to have turned out in force. Last year’s TOC drew about 400 people and an O’Reilly spokesperson estimated that this year’s TOC doubled in attendance.

Driven by a common embrace of Web. 2.0 strategies—a general view of Web development and design characterized by online applications that encourage online community, social networking and the active engagement of online users—a series of speakers led by technology strategist Stephen Abram debunked conventional publishing wisdom and challenged the notion of a passive audience waiting for publisher-conceived products. Abram called on publishers to take note of a “generational change” in how media is perceived, emphasizing that “books are not going away, reading is not down, sales are up, and teens are reading.” But while Abrams stressed that consumers still want books, he cautioned that they don’t necessarily want them in print format. Increasingly, many consumers expect to read book content on everything from laptop computers to cell phones and other handheld devices. Publishers were exhorted to trust their customers and to solicit them for new kinds of content—in fact, to change the conventional paradigm of traditional book publishing. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace were cited again and again for their ability to aggregate large numbers of users, generate social exchange and to create products based on that exchange.

Bill Burger of the Copyright Clearance Center outlined the history of copyright, the role of technological innovation in undermining its terms, and how that same innovation is creating new business models for publishers. He cited projects like Wikitravel, which uses a Wikipedia-like structure that allows users to post their travel experiences, which can be converted into book content; and the Encyclopedia of Life, a collaborative online reference source about every species of life on the planet, compiled by a variety of users and vetted by scientists. On the Web, said author and educator Douglas Rushkoff, readers become writers, which can be a challenge for publishers accustomed to dictating what their audience will read. Rushkoff revised the conventional notion that “content is king,” turning it into “contact is king,” and pointed out that “content is really an excuse for social exchange,” which in turn generates content and new sales to a new a kind of consumer.

But while this new consumer is fairly flexible about how that content will be consumed, creating this content can be a challenge. In a session called “Gadgetopia,” Bill Damon from the Harvard Business School Press and HBSP author Tammy Erickson led a discussion on creating high-value digital content for a scholarly audience that can be suspicious of the quality of material designed to be read on a phone. “You’ve got to experiment cheaply, produce content in a form that can be outputted in multiple formats and teach authors to write short pieces on complex topics,” Damon said.

Representing the traditional publishing industry, afternoon speaker PW editor-in-chief Sara Nelson acknowledged the industry’s lag in embracing the new digital paradigm, but emphasized that traditional book publishing is changing and that the industry is paying more attention to technological solutions and embracing many of the concepts discussed throughout the day. And afternoon keynote speaker John Ingram, vice-chairman of Ingram Industries, announced plans to expand the facilities of Ingram’s Lightning Source Print-on-Demand unit and to partner with Microsoft to scan more than 100,000 books for its LiveSearch Books project. Ingram cited this project to sum up many of the issues touched on throughout the day, in a presentation that focused on the need to experiment and survey the many paths available to a publisher today—from print products to electronic content to large print and POD services. “We’ve gone from an either/or world to an either/and world,” Ingram said. “Which path should a publisher take? Why not take all of them.”

Today’s program includes morning keynotes by O’Reilly Media CEO Tim O’Reilly and Bob Young of POD service Lulu.com. Penguin USA’s Jeff Gomez will speak on a panel on literary blogging and Stephen Abram will interview a panel of teens about how they consume media.