TOC afternoon keynotes

Jeff Jarvis
What Would Google Do (WWGD)?

Hypocrisy warning: Because the author got an advance he published a traditional book and did not "eat his own dog food" and make the book searchable.

The link changes everything
Everybody needs a little SEO
Think distributed (people don't have to come to us)
We need to do the work of publishing in public
It's about the process (EG blog) not a product
Elegant organzation is what FaceBook and publishing should do
mass market is dead, it's all about the niche
AOL should have become FaceBook instead of partnering with a media company
yahoo shouldn't have become a movie studio, they should have become an advertising giant like google
publishing is not about making books, it's about ideas and community
life is beta (it's a form of transparency too)
Craig Newmark: get out of the way (media tries to control all the time, but need to learn to get out of the way)

What if Google ruled the world?
-GoogleCollins - kill the book to save it
- video book, eBook / vBook, audio book, powerpoint, twitter reviews, performance, blog process
- what if publishers bought access to ideas across all media [some authors only have one idea they keep rewriting in new wonderful ways]
- what if readers subscribe to updates
- what if books were updatable searchable, linkable, correctable [adobe forms might let us do correctable]
- what if the book were a process more than a product

The process of peer review in a blog leads to deep thinking (in contrast to Is Google Making us Stupid).

In a content economy you pay for copies. In a process economy contents with links give value to the content; a book without links is worthless.

Is advertising replaced by quality and service. Are the customers the ad agency?


Impact of google

we stay linked forever
is privacy over because of publicness
does the internet make us smarter
government - transparent administration?
talent - this is the creation generation


publishing has always let people make their mark, but now the scale can be much bigger. 80-some% of people



Sara Lloyd (the Digitalist)
What does the future look like for publishers?

Are publishers extending into the online world or being commented on in the world?

The digital market offers a great big marketing opportunity. Free blogging before the publication puts a huge amount of pressure on the published product. It has to be a package that incorporates the experience.

You're operating on shifting sands.

The future does not look like what you think it will.

Nintendo DS put its toe in the water with classic book offerings.

The mobile phone has already adapted faster and better than any eBook reader device.

google has the ability to completely change the industry.

8% of the apps for the iphone on the first week were various reading apps.

5 out of 10 of the bestsellers in Japan began on a mobile device.

Stanza is at 1.2 million when eBook readers sell in hundreds of thousands

50% of those in Africa have a phone and they spend 30-70% of their income on it - huge potential for educational marketing

if an access/subscription model becomes the standard, google will probably win
social DRM is needed for the market to grow
google is ignoring the publishers DRM / propriety battle and just figuring it out in a simple way

the challenge for publishing is working with average users instead of against them

content is king --> comments are king

go out and be part of the conversation instead of bringing people to you (and learn from it)

publishing currently has the distribution key, but could loose that

publishing may need to offer tools, services, forums,
may need to collaborate much more effectively

publishers understand markets, not people (they talk about reaching the "general reader")

"we need to reengineer pricing for the new models"

publishers have always outsourced for technology (book binding, XML). now it should have that strength inside.
publishers need to come out of their ivory towers. publishers are rubbish at working with each other.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/music

nature can react instantly to change, but it takes longer to redraw the maps.

need to invest in digital infrastructure
need to use the internet as a tool or resource (the book isn't this pure source of content and the internet not)
need commercial models of distribution that value the content
need standards for interoperability
need to constantly review our performance
need to respect the reader


Jason Freid
keynote

37 Signals - The best software with the least amount of necessary features

37 Signals made $500,000 on a PDF book and an additional 500,000 on ___ [conferences?] in a couple years on the side.

Don't consider themselves author, in fact wrote the book by accident.

Whenever you make something you make something else -- there's always a byproduct (a lesson learned later).

The lumber industry started to cut down trees to make structures. There were these waste products (chips and dust) that they later realized they could turn into products and now lumbar byproducts is an industry onto itself. The oil industry did a similar thing.

37 Signals byproducts were their opinions, success, failures.

Around 2003 37 Signals realized they couldn't use email to manage projects and went looking for a project management tool. They look at MS Project and its all about stats and graphs, but management should be about collaboration. So 37 Signals made a system and used it for themselves. Customers noticed it and asked for it. It went on the market in 2004 (base camp). They became a full time business
business is paranoid about sharing business ideas
If a famous chef sold a cook book other people wouldn't put him out of business
business needs to build an audience.
they started sharing what they did and making money just talking about what they do
they don't think they know what they're doing, but they know what works for them so they're not afraid to talk about it
they realized they'd been writing a book (about how meetings suck, etc) on their blog so they made a book
They sold a book through a publisher and only made 12,000 because publishers like to make themselves money
so they decided they next book would just be by selling a PDF (a form people could consume) it started selling really well
people asked for a print book, so they publish it on LuLu and get about 50,000 a year for it.
they decided to put the book up for free online to help build the audience
now they have an audience and are working on another book (with a traditional publisher)
they did well because they wanted to control their content and had the guts to do it
publishers have byproducts that they could sell but don't want to (audio recordings of 37 signals team yelling at each other, early drafts)
publishers should sell/share proposals, early versions (it works for the extended features of a DVD)

they wanted mainstream appeal with their next book and be a bestseller. they are very good at selling to their audience (tech people), but wanted to extend the audience.

they are thinking of having a guy do a sketch cartoon version of the book.

the book generates a lot of publicity which is great for the business. just talking things through also helps a lot in understanding them.

the software has an affiliate setup, but the books aren't in that because they're sold through a separate system.



Jason Epstein
Technology and Human Nature

[NOTE: Jason spoke softly and it was very difficult to make out what he said, so there are certainly more errors in my summary than usual below]

We're at the end of the Guttenberg era. A cultural revolution is on its way if we survive the economic collapse, icebergs melting, and missiles. Technology made possible by Guttenberg's invention. Rather than spread the Bible, the press spread our secular cultural. Some Muslims at the time said the press was Satanic. Hiroshima and the economic collapse cast blame on the press.

The internet is like the press going to bring a revolution.
We are storying telling animals that find ourselves in these stories. It's in our nature to hold on to the most truthful stories and discard the rest. What is false does not survive. We read Homer yet their were other stories about Troy.

Americans will always do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities.

Most of our time on Earth stories and poems were memorized works. A technology was invented to capture these in scribbles and we found in ourselves somehow the ability to glance at these scribbles and decode them. We built up a codex and all of our civilization is encoded within it. If all of it becomes electronic, may we pray that a great malfunction does not loose them all. Ephemeral content such as encyclopedias are not archived and are increasingly existing only in digital form.

Its not impossible to imagine a digital world in the future without Ginsberg.

Non-fiction will always be written by people working alone in their studies, not in linked networks. The real experts always work this way.

Literary work with a few exceptions has always been a solitary work.

iPhones will produce a few gems amongst the rabble. Rights will become superfluous. Digital rights management is essential. It is not about greed, but survival. Copyright law is too long though and should only last the lifetime of the author. [publishers would have an inherit bias towards younger writers]

Some booksellers have become publishers. Word of mouth has always been the best source of information about books.

Like American automobile producers, publishers will defend their business model until they are forced to change.
Talented editors only need a small amount of management to function, which is increasingly more so in a digital world.
Agents might become group managers of editors. Authors will use not for profit arrangements to protect themselves.
Customers will pay less. Whenever new publishing paradigms exist,... man is a story telling creature and that will persist.
Print on demand can be even further decentralize publishing. Dedicated reading devices have a place as they approach the original codex.
The wheel doesn't have to be reinvented though. Multipurpose mobile devices will instead be the main choice.
The most economical presentation device will remain to be the original.

An Espresso book making machine at the University of Alberta prints about 100 books a day. This could happen at any college bookstore to produce course notes and texts.

The decentralized world wide digital marketplace can extend to coffee shops and other such places. The 15% Hispanic population could be much better served by this. The sub-Saharan market which is highly under-served can be reached out to.

The Espresso is brand new and not fully tested, but those who have seen it operate have seen the future.