The problems and the promise: Authority As The Bookseller’s c.e.o. and publisher Nigel Roby is saying this evening at our launch event in London, The FutureBook Conference is in its fifth anniversary. And, as Europe’s largest publishing industry conference, it addresses a broad audience. Roby: “So many dimensions to modern publishing, and so many groups who have… Read More
Get Porter Alerts: Publishing Coverage On The Fly
Know When The Tweets Take Off Publishing’s conference and trade-show events stack up like the cities of Troy, one atop the other, right? It’s always springtime for publishing somewhere, and who can keep up? Now, you can: Let my boarding passes be your guide. Sign up at my site for my free newsletter, Porter Alerts! By having these notices… Read More
Global dreams, local challenges: BEA amid transition
Amazon’s shadow, BookCon’s boost, IDPF’s confab, Chinese Trajectory, scalding-hot Scalzi: Must be BEA Just in time to chill the rising heat of late-May New York: news of troubled talks in the UK between the biggest bookseller and the biggest book publisher on Earth. As my colleague Philip Jones writes at The Bookseller, “Penguin Random House UK and Amazon… Read More
Monday: Berlin’s ‘Senior’ Publishers’ Forum Convenes In A Digitally Youthful Industry
‘The Most Senior In Continental Europe’ There are, it turns out, myriad ways to structure and calibrate the discussions and debates and conversations that go into a good publishing conference. Rüdiger Wischenbart This year, one of the most interesting contextualizations awaits us in Berlin. There, international publishing specialist and consultant Rüdiger Wischenbart is at the helm… Read More
Publishing For Digital Minds Conference Opens London Book Fair Monday
Setting The Tone In A New Setting Putting together a major publishing conference program is never easy. But putting one together to open one of the year’s leading trade shows is particularly tricky: there are a lot of competing interests, most of them on the commercial side of the industry. And the audience for one… Read More
IfBookThen in Milan: Soaring past 'book' to 'then'
“It was easy to wonder where was the book in IfBookThen,” as Lucio Braganolo writes at ApogeOnline. And that was precisely the point, the purpose, and the pride of this “post-publishing” conference in springtime Milan. Unique in an already-busy season of international conferences, BookRepublic’s IfBookThen 2015 was devised by c.e.o. Marco Ferrario to get right past what… Read More
Contributors and conferences: The sun never sets on The FutureBook
We see conferences — conferencing — in many ways now. In many places. Or in no places. Such is digital publishing. Such is digital everything. Everywhere and nowhere. At all times and at no times. World without schedule but hardly without agenda. And here we are, at The FutureBook, holding what is, in fact, a kind of… Read More
Author: Beware Having Lunch With A Logo
Have you ever shaken hands with a corporation? Have you ever kissed a building façade on both cheeks at a cocktail party? Have you ever chatted with a book cover on legs? Of course not. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that we seem to be expected to do these things online all the… Read More
Do Personality Traits Have Any Business in Business? Yes, Says One Agent — With Authority
When The Gatekeeper Works For You There are many agents who are absolutely lovely people but who don’t command authority naturally. Why should you, as a writer, care about this? Literary agent Kristin Nelson doesn’t make you wait long for the answer: It’s simple: Authors with strong contracts have more successful careers. And say what… Read More
Perceived differences between 'us' and 'them'
“More trust in your staff not to be numpties.” Only if you lingered for a bit after #FutureChat — or looked back later to see the stream — might you have spotted that comment from Suw Charman-Anderson. And not much earlier, Victoria Noe had said, “It’s like a generation gap.” She was referring to the… Read More