Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Getting Ready for Digital Book World 2010 with Mike Shatzkin & Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

A new “Beyond the Book” podcast is released, offering a special preview of first-time conference Digital Book World that kicks off next week in New York City.

Conference chair and industry pundit Mike Shatzkin of the Idea Logical Company, and colleague Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, join host Chris Kenneally to discuss the conference, e-books, e-readers and the overall impact of digital change on the publishing industry.

I found it very a interesting conversation about one of the hottest issues today in the publishing market (even though there was no direct mention "green" related consequences of the digital revolution in the book market..).

Here's just one quote to give you a taste of what you'll hear. This is a quote from Mike Shatzkin:

I think unsettling and disturbing would probably be a far more accurate description than happy. I don’t think that the business that we’ve known for – pretty consistently operated in the same way for the last 50 or 75 years is not going to be particularly recognizable in another five or 10 years, and that can’t make people who have been succeeding in the business as it was very comfortable.

What I would say is that music and newspaper and magazines for that matter had a special problem that’s different from books, which is that they – newspapers and music always sold customers things they didn’t want to buy. You wanted three songs, they sold you an album with 12. You buy the Boston Globe for six different particular things in it, but they sold you 85 other things that you didn’t buy it for.

The podcast can be heard here: http://beyondthebookcast.com/at-digital-book-world-a-is-for-audience/.

A full transcript of the conversation is available here: http://www.beyondthebookcast.com/wp-images/DBWPreviewTranscript.pdf

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!