Tools of Change 2011

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) is covering the Tools of Change 2011 (@toc) conference in NYC. It concludes today. PW’s articles include “Old Pros, New Tools and the Future of Publishing,” “At Morning Keynote, Margaret Atwood Reminds Attendees Change Can Be Bad,” and “Technology Wars Never End.”

Tuesday’s TOC program closed with a keynote presentation by publishing consultant Brian O’Leary (@brianoleary) called “Context First: A Unified Field Theory of Publishing.” ... [H]e tried to outline the need for a publisher shift from a “container-first model,” i.e., an industry geared to focus on physical books, to a “context-first” digitally-focused model, a model that by its very nature will produce content prominently tagged and coded for easy and immediate discovery online, unlike the physical book. It’s a model O’Leary expects to dominate the newly emerging era of the “born-digital”—both the new generation of digital consumers and the digital-first ventures launched to serve their needs.

Read the full PW coverage of the TOC conference.

Digital Book World 2011 Roundup

More than 1,200 publishing professionals gathered at Digital Book World 2011 (@DigiBookWorld) in NYC last week for 3 days of forecasting the future of publishing. A quick roundup of news coverage, tweets, PowerPoint slides, and reactions to Digital Book World 2011 (#dbw11) is located on the DBW website. For example, from the Los Angeles Times

In 2010, ebook sales rose by around 400% and pulled in almost $1 billion in sales. Madeline McIntosh, Random House’s president of sales, operations and digital, said her company is working on the belief that by 2015, half the books readers buy will be ebooks.

And from Eric Hellman

“Fear no ebooks” was the message of the conference, and it was a welcome message to many of the participants that I talked to. “I’m just trying to learn about ebooks” and “we’re trying to decide what to do” were phrases I heard more than once.

Read this in full.

Digital Book World: Industry forecast - results of the DBW/Forrester 2010 publishing survey

At the Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) conference (#dbw11) in NYC, James McQuivey (@jmcquivey) of Forrester research (@forrester) led a seminar on what publishers can expect in the coming year. Here’s coverage by TeleRead (@paulkbiba):

In 2010 ereader prices fell close to $100 and 10.5 million people in the US own a dedicated ereader. New reading form factors were introduced. Tablets in about 10 million US hands right now – primarily the iPad. A third of the people who own an iPad own a Kindle. Nearly $1 billion was spent on ebooks in the US alone.

In 2011 20+ million people will read ebooks on a reader or tablet. $1.3 billion will be spent on ebooks at the bare minimum. They can’t even forecast the impact on non-traditional eformats.

Are publishers ready? Surveyed publishing execs to find out. 89% optimistic about digital transition; 74% say readers will be better off; 66% say people will read more; 83% say their companies can manage digital transition; 63% say have a digital plan in place; 80% believe their company needs significant retraining.

Read this in full.