To address the challenge of book discovery in a digital world, a group of media industry participants led by the Perseus Books Group, Librify, BookExpo, The AlleyNYC and William Morris Endeavor (WME) will conduct the industry’s first-ever hackathon, a collaborative digital programming event.

Called the Publishing Hackathon, the event invites digital designers, engineers, programmers, and entrepreneurs to spend 36 hours together in teams to develop new approaches to digital book discovery. The Publishing Hackathon will take place on May 18 and 19 at The Alley NYC, a digital co-working space in New York. The participants will be briefed by a cross-section of book publishing leaders, and then will form teams to create apps, Web sites, programming or businesses that can address the issue of book discovery. At the end of the weekend, a team of judges from publishing, technology, media and venture capital will identify the three to five most promising finalists. The finalists will have the opportunity to present their projects at BEA on Friday May 31 at 3 p.m.