Nov

FutureBook Conference, Digital Innovation Awards Announced

Registration is open for The Bookseller’s third annual FutureBook Conference is slated for early next month, and like most conferences it will highlight some of the biggest names in the digital publishing industry. What is different about this event, however, is a startling admission from its blog.

According to Sam Missingham, “Digital is no longer siloed, existing as an interesting area for experimentation and discussion as it was only a few years ago. Commercial realities have meant that the heads of digital in all the major publishing houses are now tasked with delivering significant and sustainable revenue streams to their company’s bottom line. The digital publishing space feels very grown up compared to only a few years ago.”

That is an exciting outlook for what was once relegated to the status of flash-in-the-pan or a form of reading that only tech geeks would choose to employ. The focus on digital now is no longer something that publishers do to keep up with the trends; now, they are going digital to stay in business.

This year’s event will showcase some of the trendsetters in digital publishing, such as Sourcebooks and gold-level sponsor YUDU. Kobo will of course be there, as its CEO is one of the keynote speakers for the event. Interestingly, several literary agents will be speaking as well, namely on how the transition to digital affects authors and their relationships with publishers.

At the event, the FutureBook Digital Innovation Awards will be presented from the over 221 entires submitted, and the short list for those awards is available here. GoodeReader will be on location at the conference and posting news and interviews throughout the event.

Mercy Pilkington (1086 Posts)

Mercy Pilkington is a young-adult author and a teacher in a correctional facility. She does not have a single textbook in her classroom. With the top-of-the-line technology at her disposal and the low reading ability of many of her students, there’s no need for standard paper texts. Instead she relies on e-readers, iPads, desktop PCs, Polycom video conferencing equipment for virtual field trips, live streaming for science demonstrations, and text-to-speech read-aloud software to teach English and science. Within the next ten years, public school classrooms across the country are going to look a lot more like Mercy’s classroom because the educational possibilities with these kinds of technologies are limitless. Have a question? Send an email to mercypilkington@yahoo.com