Publish! event – tickets still available
Hot on the heels of FutureBook’s annual conference, comes Publish! in Bristol this week. They still have tickets available and there is more information here:
Innovation and the Book sets the scene: William Higham of The Next Big Thing describes the trends shaping the future of publishing; Future of Publishing Report author Alastair Horne looks at both the challenges and opportunities the industry currently faces; and Michael Kowalski of Contentment presents the development of an app-based e-book, showing innovation in practice.
In Making Money from Digital publishers present ‘show and tells’ sharing their lessons and how they are – or aren’t – generating revenue. Jonas Lennermo of ustwo™ gives a frank account of their studio’s successes and failures and considers new territory for publishing; Meg Geldens of Touch Press demonstrates the much-celebrated The Waste Land app created with Faber & Faber; and e-book packager Amber Books’ Charles Catton discusses its successes with titles such as Bodies of Evidence.
Professionals from the publishing and other industries debate whether publishers are Pioneers or Playing it Safe? in a panel including Fionnuala Duggan of CourseSmart (formerly Random House Group Digital head); digital agency Brandwidth’s Dean Johnson, whose projects include the ground-breaking Guinness World Records iPad app; and Naomi Alderman, a novelist who has won the Orange Award for New Writers and written for online alternate reality games.
As well as looking at how we make money from digital, it is also important we remain ambitious and excited by the possibilities for publishing – and prepare accordingly. For Inventing the Future we bring together Dave Addey of Agant, which created Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone, a new form of app-based storytelling; Bardowl’s Chris Book, who is pioneering a subscription service for audiobooks; and Alexis Kennedy of Failbetter Games, whose Varytale story engine allows writers to create game-like narratives – as well as generating a new revenue stream.
How can we put all these ideas into practice? In How to Innovate we investigate the models that can help you make innovation happen, including labs, hackdays and ‘20% time’. Matt Marsh of Firsthand Experience describes his novel research methods for Plastic Logic’s e-reader; RedWeb’s David Burton explains how they create environments for rapid innovation for publishers such as Random House; and Mike Phillips of Plymouth University’s i-DAT programme talks about how it is informing innovation in the publishing sector and beyond.