Caren Milloy, JISC (United Kingdom): huge survey of users with over 23,000 responses on ebook use from students and academics and librarians. Data presented was all about students, despite the title. Highest users of ebooks: business students used them a lot more than other areas and medical titles were hardly used at all. How did they get ahold of the ebook: most student got them through the university library, as opposed to free, off the web, pirated, etc. Very few students actually purchased etextbooks. How did they read them, part or all of the book: read "in and out" by...

John Warren; Eric Frank - Flatworld; Frank Lyman - Coresmart; Nicholas Smith - Agile Mind; Neeru Khosla - CK12 Founcation Flatworld: open access textbooks but still able to generate sustainable revenue CK12: doing same thing but completely in K to 12 market. Providing online services and developed online reader Coresmart: Many textbooks now available in digital format. 10,000 etextbook titles on their site. Agile Mind: now can marry instructional concepts and multimedia. How do digital textbooks solve problem of educating student; online books give more access and lowers price point. Hard for teacher/student to get "real time" knowledge of what's relevant to...

Speaker is Peter Collingridge of Enhanced Editions. Published The Death of Buddy Monroe. Came from a background of publishing, web page designing and film production. Value of books driven down by retailers and impact of digital has been very small. Want to make digital innovations to increase value of books. Sit between developer, consultancy and marketing house. UK publishing houses slow to uptake on the iPhone. They said they were not publishing houses. E-ink devices too limited. iPhone has the ability. Had to be a premium publisher to get value back into the book....

Skip Prichard, President and CEO of Ingram Content Group. Today's ebooks are warmed over print books and will be changed into something very different in the next five years. There is no fundamental right for a business to survive and that included publishers. Publishers must stay focused in marketing creative and innovative content. Print and digital are going to merge and this is how the next generation of consumers will think. Kids spend 7.5 hours a day in front of a digital device and industry must recognize this. Industry must simplify - find mission and strategy and focus on it. ...

William Patry, Google copyright counsel, but not speaking for Google. Copyright expert, author and law professor, all in the copyright area. Legal system should not be used to solve business problems, even when there are legal issues. Legal system is bad place to seek closure to a business problem. Copyright industry feels that more laws and better laws will solve their business problems. Piracy is not a legal problem it is a market problem. It is a failure to give the consumer what they want. There is a belief that sending someone to jail will increase the bottom line...

Sameer Shariff, CEO, Impelysis. Social networking has opened up audiences. Publishing can't continue with B to B business models. Marketing and sales must shift to a conversation paradigm. Publishers are going from B to B to B to C. The consumer now becomes the sales person with social networks. ...

Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post. Books don't end with the printed page, they are conversation starters, and this is what can be done very well on-line. For the first time book readers want not just to read, but to engage others with their reading. Combine the two, publishing and social interaction, and this will bring in the golden age of publishing. ...

I had a chance to play with this new ereader at a press presentation by Marvel Semiconductor who powers the unit. This is an extremely impressive unit. It is fast, fast, fast. According to Marvel, this is because they do a partial, rather than a whole, refresh on the e-ink screen and this results in a refresh time that is 66% faster than units such as the Nook and Kindle. Also contributing to this is the fact that the video controller is integrated with the processor. I must say that this is borne out in practice. The...

When it comes to social media, quantity counts, but quality counts a lot more. That’s the word from two popular workshops held during day one at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference. Twitter—the smart, the ineffective and the annoying ways publishers use it—was the focus of a session run by O’Reilly associate publisher Mike Hendrickson. Speaking to a standing room only crowd, he urged publishers not to fixate on numbers, but to focus on attracting a diverse group of engaged, high-quality followers. How? By using Twitter not just to broadcast information, but to spark a conversation. And by making sure what they’re...

Monday is a day of workshops here at TOC and the material presented is very detailed and meant for working level people. Some of the sessions, for example, last for three hours. I haven't summarized any of these because we don't go into that level of detail here at TeleRead, but Sue Polanka, of No Shelf Required, has been attending them and I would suggest you go over to her site to see her reports....

Copia is a new social reading platform and I had it explained to me by Anthony Antolino, their senior vice president. At the outset I must say that I was skeptical, after all another social platform? But I ended up being very impressed. Copia is first and foremost a software experience that is designed to be interoperable and platform independent. It will run on your PC or Mac and on your smartphone or tablet. To the extent possible the UI will be the same across all platforms. Copia is a mixture of three things - content, community...

I'm here, but the WiFi connection is barely adequate (and most people aren't even here yet), the same as it was last year. I don't know if I'll be able to post "live" once I get out of the press room and into the conference rooms. We'll see what happens....