In This Space

Last Sunday was the Book Camp 2 and just like the first Book Camp I think I left smarter.

We got t-shirts

Also, I got to hang out with Margret Atwood!

Book Camp is an unconference, the schedule is created and set by the attendees at the start.

Ami Greko explaining how it works

Also, knitting is welcome.

The schedule for the day

Laura's pretty yarn

The first session I went to was led by Nick Ruffilo and was called “Brainstorming to come up with a Viable Trade Model”

Nick Ruffilo

Nick began with a lot of numbers on the whiteboard about sales, titles published and income.  This sparked some rather heated discussion.  “Was this data correct?” “Is it being interpreted correctly?”  “Be careful about what you extrapolated from it because you’re veering into speculation.”  Nick was trying to get the group to brainstorm via the “Harvard Business Review model” and I believe it was Guy who quipped that “some believe that’s what ruined publishing in the first place.”

What makes a published work part of the industry or an outlier?  For instance, would a work consisting of the results of Brett xoxing his butt be an outlier?  In case that the discussion wasn’t lively enough things got rowdy again with the idea that sales and quality can be used interchangeably.

Imagining we were starting with a blank slate, how would we begin to develop a revenue model?  The Music Merchandising Model (sigh) the idea of a Sporting Franchsise (in publishing this is the Gawker model) or something entirely new.   It was a good idea for a session and props to Nick for having a ready answers.

For my second session I chose Guy Gonzalez’s Community Engagement & Development.

Guy Gonzalez

The major points here can not be said enough times:

• Community leads to commerce, commerce does not give you community.

• Customers control the conversation.

• Engaging with readers directly requires community, you do not have to build a new platform, find your readers.

• Email is still a valuable tool, in fact its so valuable you need to make sure you’re not abusing it, use it wisely.

• Also valuable is connecting with an individual user.  If a company @s back to a user it can be powerful – ancedata, I do get a kick out of a quick connection when it feels authentic.

• The voracious readers and the casual readers have different levels of “brand recognition” with publishers.

Thanks to Bethanne Patrick (aka @thebookmaven) I learned that the CIA has a Director of Social Media – they love Twitter for real time monitoring and hashtags although apparently the use of hastags has dramatically decreased as twitter grew.

Brett Sandusky and I hosted a session on the process involved in creating digital products via an Agile Workflow.

It's official now

This is more of Brett’s world than mine but I talked about how the small task group helps me stay on schedule, gives participants a stronger feeling of ownership and it can lead to fresh marketing ideas.  It should be said I do not like being the presenter, at all, so this was good for me.

Next session I went to was hosted by Mary Ann Naples and was about Monetizing a Direct Audience.

Mary Ann Naples

She talked about the Open Sky model but honestly what I learned most in this session was that Margret Atwood should always be in attendance at any conference dealing with the future of publishing.  She was very engaged, entertaining and smart.

Margret Atwood

Margret likened the idea of commerce destination where an author was curating the content to the Book of the Month club, where overwhelming choice is limited.  Margret Atwood told a story about seeking out hackers to take them to lunch to find out how they tick:  love solving puzzles, find it relaxing, likened to knitting!  And of course, the cheese sandwich was invoked, as in who will pay for her cheese sandwich if the work is pirated.  We also discussed how the internet could just poof vanish… so hold on to your hard copies.  Of course, a lead lined safe may safeguard your discs.

I never made into the last session I had planned on as I got into a conversation….

Wine

then as it should be, there was wine.