This year’s BEA was exciting, and well, a little tiring. Next week I’ll be posting some of my highlights of the show, but for now I’d like to share a couple interesting tidbits. At this year’s show there were 1300 exhibitors and 22,365 industry professionals. This year was also the first time the largest publishing conference in North America opened up to the public, meaning “power readers” paid $40 for entrance during the last day of the show, where they could pick up as many ARCs as they could carry. Another exciting piece of news is that Tor/Forge Books, an imprint of MacMillan, will soon debut a DRM-free ebookstore. This makes MacMillan the first of the big six publishers to a) sell directly to consumers and b) have DRM-free ebooks (at a larger scale). It’s about time!
Anyway, look out for posts next week from me about new developments in the digital publishing world. Here’s a list of the highlights I’ll be covering:
- Understanding Metadata
- Basics of Licensing
- Overview of nine new apps/digital publishing companies, including Mobnotate
- Introduction to innovative companies including WordPivot, Link.Me, and BiblioCrunch
- Review of Zola Books, a new ebookstore
- Discussion of the Reader Revolution, and how publishers, readers, and writers are coming together
- Exploration of PubSlush, a new author platform
- An Interview with the CEO of Smashwords, Mark Coker
- Memorable quotes from NYU publishing students about their take on the future of publishing
