Much conversation and virtual space has been devoted over the last week to the announcement by O’Reilly that they are discontinuing the Tools of Change conference. The announcement stunned many, and lamentation abounded at the loss of what had been, for many, a forum for hearing new ideas and, equally important, an arena for networking and maintaining significant ongoing professional connections. As the producers of the Publishing Business Conference & Expo, one of the events in the same space as TOC, we have long respected our colleagues at O’Reilly. It might be expected that we would jump into the fray and exclaim...

Last week, NAPCO's Publishing Media Group launched its new video chat series, Literally Speaking Publisher Chats. The chats will take place every Friday at 11 a.m. EST, and I will be speaking to a variety of publishing people. The fun new video platform Shindig is hosting our events. On Friday, May 3, I spoke with Beth Kephart, an amazingly prolific author who has written in multiple genres including YA and memoir, and who has worked with a range of different sized publishers, from Gotham Books to Temple University Press. Kephart’s new YA novel, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, was just published on Wednesday and her next book, Handling...

Honestly, I hadn't even heard about this until I woke up this morning and checked my phone, but apparently today—that's Friday, May 3, 2013—is something of a holiday in the digital publishing community. It's the fifth annual International Day Against DRM. Huh. The organization behind the holiday—which in reality is more of an awareness-raising movement—is known as Defective by Design. As the DBD website explains, "We are a participatory and grassroots campaign exposing DRM-encumbered devices and media for what they really are: Defective by Design. We are working together to eliminate DRM as a threat to innovation in media, the privacy of...

Earlier today, O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly announced in a blog post that after seven years of hosting the Tools of Change for Publishing conference, a digital publishing event attended annually by many of the biggest names and most important members of the industry, the conference is being officially retired. Also folding along with the conference is the popular TOC blog, which, like its namesake series of events, is considered a crucial portion of most every digital publishing professional's media diet. The rationale behind the cancellation of Tools of Change seems largely to be one of financial priority. In the aforementioned blog...

Data. Traditional publishers have not used the word often when it comes to marketing. But newer publishing companies are using data in a way traditional publishing houses have not, several members of a panel at PaidContent Live said in New York City on Wednesday. “The old evolution of traditional book publishers used to be very allergic to data," said Dominique Raccah, the publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks. "What you just heard is a very different approach from that. For us it’s about metadata and surfacing, and then rinse and repeat. Metadata is a new term in our industry.” [caption id="attachment_83482" align="alignleft" width="154"] Sourcebooks CEO Dominique...

O wonder! How many goodly books are there here! How beauteous publishing is! I attended the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing (TOC) conference this past Tuesday and learned about a topic that captivates me: new forms that books are able to take when they are conceived as e-books. There is so much creative work being done in this area that I often want to hold it up to show those who think we are an industry in turmoil. An industry in transition, yes, but with many bright minds at work moving us in exciting new directions. Here’s a quick look at some highlights: Fabienne...

O'Reilly's annual Tools of Change for Publishing conference just got underway this morning at the New York Marriott Marquis in Manhattan. And while we unfortunately weren't able to make it New York for the event's first day, we will be on the scene, tweeting and reporting live, throughout days two and three. Today's big TOC draw, of course, is the (day-long) event being referred to as Author (R)evolution Day, which may very well end up being considered a revolutionary event in and of itself; the focus is on independent authors and the swiftly-growing self-publishing scene. As the TOC site describes it,...

A truly historical literary event took place last weekend in Southeast Asia that doesn't seem to have enjoyed quite as much attention from the Western media as it probably should have, and so we figured we'd briefly mention it here: During the first three days of February, Myanmar—the country still known to much of the world as Burma—held it's first-ever literary festival, the Irrawaddy Literary Festival. The Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released in November 2010 after serving 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest as a political prisoner, was the event's guest of honor, and arguably its main draw. According to an...

Author Rita Toews reached out to me recently and mentioned that Read an E-Book Week—that would be March 3-9—is currently in the process of gearing up for its 2013 festivities. This will be the event's 11th consecutive year, by the way. And Toews tells me that any author, publisher or vendor who's interested in being a part of this year's celebration of e-books is welcome to contact her via email, at r[dot]toews[at]shaw[dot]ca. Naturally, you'll also want to keep your browser tuned to the event's official website, where you'll find information about everything from the event's origins and the history of the e-book. Incidentally,...

By Eugene G. Schwartz Where is the book industry going; what will my workplace and career opportunities be like; what do I need to know to keep up with the times? Or, in a more cosmic vein, what does the future hold? In an effort to answer these questions, publishers have settled each year into a series of industry meetings of general interest. Each has a unique theme, as noted below. They make the effort to bring together a cross section of publishers, associations, service providers and media professionals to connect with audiences ranging from first-time aspirants to seasoned managers and executives...

The next Apple event is set to take place on October 4th, and the invitation going out to journalists is captioned, “Let’s talk iPhone”. This caption has led to speculation on the part of tech journalists that the new iPhone will include advanced voice-recognition features that have been in the offing since Apple bought Siri 18 months ago. They also speculate that Apple will just be introducing only one new phone—and not the rumored “low-end iPhone” that some investors have been expecting. Rather than a new low-end model, Apple can just continue to keep last year’s iPhone around as...

Sometimes we get accused of becoming an Apple blog, we post so much Apple-centric stuff, but there’s a reason for that. Apple might be obnoxious in its app approval behavior, closed in its development platform, and prudish in its gatekeeping, but there’s no denying that they make some damned fine e-book reading devices. My iPod Touch was my sole e-reader for most of the two years I had it, and I still miss it badly. Matt Buchanan makes a similar point on Gizmodo, where he says that if the rumors are true about the new iPod Touch that...