Digital Book World is a website devoted to all of the latest news in self-publishing and eBooks. Once a year they host a conference in New York where major figures in the publishing business conduct talks. The DBW Blog is on its last legs as their senior editor recently quit and the executive in charge of the entire operation fled.
The DBW blog has been around for a number of years, but all of their editors responsible for content have barely lasted a year or two. I think they are in big trouble right now because the last newswire post was from the beginning of January and the last feature piece was published in late january. Basically, nothing new has gone up in over a month, which is an eternity in the publishing industry.
The Digital Book World conference is an annual event in New York and quickly became the definitive digital publishing event in North America. Their only competition was O’Reily Tools for Change, but they shuttered their doors in 2013. Most people would figure with hardly any competition the DBW conference would be doing brisk business, but this is hardly the case. Attendance decreased 15% in 2016 and fell 10% in 2017.
Digital publishing and e-books are commonplace in North America and I don’t think there is room for a dedicated event for them anymore. Book Expo America has a digital area where all of the startups are sequestered and the entire publishing industry is in attendance, this is a place to get deals done. Meanwhile in Europe, the London Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair also have digital events that occur before the main show gets started.
It is no surprise that Daniel Berkowitz and Phil Sexton have recently left the company and Jeremy Greenfield before them. Digital Blogs hardly pay the type of money that these people are worth and it looks like DBW blog is on the downward trend and will likely be closing soon. It remains to be seen if the conference will be apart of BEA, similar to how Publishers Lunch has attached themselves to bigger events.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
