This year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the world’s largest and oldest publishing industry events, kicks off with the pre-conference CONTEC event this morning. One of the more interesting aspects to CONTEC is the large number of publishing startups present, primarily in digital publishing.
“Within the publishing categories, it’s completely cross-platform,” explained program manager Kat Meyer of the variety of professionals who take part in CONTEC.
“The digital publishing revolution isn’t going to be enough to take us where we need to go,” said Wiley president, Stephen Smith in his opening keynote.
On schedule today to speak are names like Wiley’s Stephen Smith, Sobooks founder Sascha Lobo, Rachel Ferscleiser of Tumblr, Laura Dawson of Bowker, Michael Tamblyn of Kobo, and well-known independent author Hugh Howey, among others.
One of the more interesting presentations today promises to be Lobo’s presentation on what books are going to look like once ebooks are a thing of the past, as well as a full afternoon session on self-publishing and what it means for the industry; Bowker’s data release this week that demonstrates that self-publishing is not only growing but traditional publishing’s recent related growth will hopefully provide some background insight into that presentation.
To follow the tweets from Good e-Reader and other news outlets from Frankfurt, follow the #CONTEC13 hashtag today.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.