Andrew Marsden, Britvic

• Innovation is a process not an end result.
• Most great innovations solve an existing consumer problem, and have a simple solution.
• Essential prerequisite for innovation is developing an intimate understanding of consumers and channels, enabling one to see what others do not, and take advantage of it.
• Most people should be encouraged to think inside the box — in known markets, with existing capabilities, resources, people and brands. This avoids unfocused thinking and dramatically increases chance of success.
• Innovation must be sponsored from the top — few areas of business where senior management buy-in is more crucial.
• Takes time, effort and consistent support.

Mark Harrison, Creative Director for Arts, BBC Television

• ABC of the digital future.
• A for Audience — which controls everything. Strong consumer demand and simple digital distribution have opened a Pandora’s box for media. Demand for access to BBC programming in perpetuity, rather than on a broadcast model — how to cope with this?
• B is for Brand — broadcasters used to be these; consumers defined themselves as Channel 4, or BBC2 viewers. Nowadays, people don’t — gave the example of Lost, where few in the audience could identify which network made it.
• C is for Creativity — increased personalisation by users, such as new BBC homepage.
• Traditional media has to compete with new players such as last.fm.
• In digital worlds, people spend time where ideas and products are perfect — but there are many more such places.
• Shifting power in media: Grand Theft Auto IV made more in week one than Pirates of the Caribbean.

Charles Leadbeater, author of We Think

• The most important thing to bear in mind is what people use technology for, not the technology itself.
• Change in consumer behaviour:
  • 1950s: I need
  • 1960s-1980s: I want
  • 1990s-: I can
• Consumers are no longer passive. They want to be involved and they want recognition.
• Leads to more decentralised organisational models — e.g. Wikipedia.
• Example of I Love Bees viral for Halo — 600k visitors and 4k strong core of players.
• So there will be new forms of storage and distribution, but they won’t entirely displace existing models.
• There will be more of everything: more authors, works, channels, and ways to read, write and connect.
• Boom in self-publishing, with more and better tools and lower barriers.
• Existing stakeholders need to find new ways to add value.
• Civil war in some media organisations such as the BBC between traditionalists and modernisers.
• We won’t prosper without addressing these fundamental questions — music wouldn’t do so, and look where they are.
• The book trade is just an interface between creator and consumer, and we must accept that other interfaces will appear.
• How will authors be rewarded for their work — problem if only the already prosperous can afford to make a living writing.

David Edgerton, Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College, London

• Disputed futurists’ visions of digital developments.
• Asked why websites don’t have the same impact as books — and why those predicting the rise of digital publish printed books.
• Said that all of the good bits of Wikipedia are taken from printed books.
• Argued that established systems and established industries are the future, not digital developments: shipping is more important to world trade than the Internet, and apparently mainframe computers are making a comeback.
• Posited a divide between free, poor quality digital information and paid-for, high quality old media.
• Quality must be paid for — and books sell in ever larger numbers.

A discussion escalating into a dispute then ensued between Leadbeater and Edgerton on the roles of new and old media in education in the developing world.

The chairman concluded the segment with Leadbeater and Edgerton by observing that they had been “refreshingly pragmatic” in not talking about technology, which is “boring”.

The final session that I attended was four people pitching “the next big thing”. Emma Barnes from Snowbooks introduced a new website called Bookbackers. David Kohn, former Commercial Director of Borders, make the case for a trade-wide CSR initiative. Mark Rusher from Orion talked about matters digital. Finally, Kieron Smith from Retail8 made a presentation about rediscovering reading. To be honest, this session didn’t lend itself to notes, but if you’re interested, Emma has posted her presentation here, and Kieron has written about his here.

And with that, I went to get changed for the Nibbies — big w00t to the four winners from the Hachette Livre group.

The views expressed below are those of the individual speakers — however any errors of transcription are, naturally, entirely my own, and I would be pleased to hear from other conference attendees, or indeed speakers, in the comments.

It’s important also to note that my notes from the conference concentrate on digital and online — I’ve taken a magpie approach and just blogged the shiny bits which interested me. Much more was said at the conference, on a range of topics, and if you want to get some other points of view, I would commend to you The Bookseller’s blog pieces on the first and second day of the conference, and Kieron Smith’s fine job of liveblogging it.

Steve Bohme, Research Director, BML

• Book sales over the Internet grew 26% from 2006 to 2007 (about the same rate of growth as supermarkets).
• The rate of growth from 2003 to 2007 was 166% (against 115% growth for supermarkets).
• Sales of general reference products are suffering from information being accessed online.
• Internet sales are somewhat skewed to backlist: 16% of backlist is bought online and 11% of frontlist.
• Harry Potter sales by channel show growth of online:

Year	1999	2001	2003	200	2007
Online	5%	3%	12%	12%	17%
Chain Booksellers	60%	40%	33%	28%	26%

Michelle Harrison, Henley Centre HeadlightVision

• Strong social trend towards interaction and getting together.
• We want to get together becase increasingly we’re living apart:
  • Only 12% of families are two parents, two children.
  • By 2010, 34% of households will be Dual Income No Kids (DINKs).
  • Single-person households are the fastest growing category.
• Commuting is on the rise — the average Londoner spends 370 hours a year travelling.
• The UK works longer hours than any other country in Europe, and is becoming a twenty-four hour society.
• In this context, people feel connected online — 37% of 15-24s feel part of a virtual community.
• However, this isn’t solely an online phenomenen. There’s an increasing blurring of the line between virtual and physical, with online tools and services facilitating interaction on personal, local and community levels — e.g. using GPS and mobile to tag locations, photos and other content and allow sharing of experiences.
• Increasing trend toward “we time” rather than “me time”.
• Personalisation is more important than mass production — a mix CD (or playlist) is seen as better than a CD from HMV.
• This trend to personalisation is also seen in the current boom in photo books, blurb.com etc.
• Key demographic groups — boomers and millennials — are comfortable online: 48% of boomers with Internet access regularly buy products online.
• Millennials — the digital natives — are even more at home online. Their comfort with online and ability to multitask — the mean number of activities performed concurrently whilst online by 16-24s is four — mean that patterns of reading/media consumption will change.
• Marketing to these groups requires different strategies. Marketing to boomers is about inclusivity. Marketing to millennials is about creating engaging stories. However, the common denominator between both groups is giving them experiences.
• Huge boom in social experience — 59% of adult Internet users have attended a live music event in the last three years.
• Massive numbers of festivals — around arts, books, music etc.
• Retail space is also social space, and bookshops were early adopters in this area — however, they have perhaps sat still and been overtaken by other social spaces.

Luke Johnson, Chairman, Borders UK.

• Online is a healthy, competitive market, with room for competition.
• The entertainment industry is only just beginning to face the challenges of that online world.
• Borders is launching a new transactional website, which will also create online communities around local stores.
• Borders may venture into print-on-demand and facilitating self-publishing.
• Online does however lack quality of experience and serendipity.
• On e-books, Johnson agrees with John Lanchester that physical books are in extraordinarily robust health.
• Borders will sell the iRex Iliad e-book reader. However, Johnson does not believe that it bears comparison with the iPod’s effect on music, owing to issues around expense, design, usability and formats.
• Impossible to predict trends over the medium term — five to ten year plans best left to totalitarian rulers.
• Bill Gates believes that Blu-Ray will be the last physical media format, before the world moves entirely to digital delivery. True for much of media, but not, Johnson believes, for books.

Ian Hudson, Deputy Chief Executive, The Random House Group and President of the Publishers Association.

• We all have the ability to influence the digital future, but need to focus on what we can do.
• The advent of the e-book is the biggest single change for the industry since the printing press.
• Offers huge advantages, both in terms of giving consumers the choice of when, where and how they consume books, and in terms of making books more dynamic.
• Also offers opportunity for expanded range, and for booksellers and others to build enhanced relationships with consumers.
• 5-10 year time frame for e-books to become significant part of market.
• Books will not necessarily follow the music industry model — can be different.
• Printed books remain one of the most emotionally attached media.
• Many of the roles traditionally associated with publishers remain vital in the digital world.
• Core bookselling principles also apply to selling in the digital world.
• Major threats:
  • Fear: some authors and agents are reluctant to grant rights, and some publishers and booksellers are adopting a wait and see approach.
  • Piracy: in the absence of legitimate digital content, systematic piracy and peer to peer file sharing will thrive.
  • Pricing: if e-books are underpriced or given away free, we risk undermining our core proposition. Hudson saw this as the major threat.
  • Erosion of territoriality: UK publishers must be hugely vigilant against cheap US e-books. Swift action against transgressors will be paramount.
  • Interoperability: the range of formats is confusing for consumers. The industry should move towards one common format for e-books, and one common DRM scheme. Without achieving this, the only other route to interoperability will be DRM-free files, which should be avoided.
• Opportunities:
  • To enhance and extend range, look at additional content, sales by chapter etc.
  • Digital originals — looking at the success in Japan of novels written for mobile telephone.
  • Books serialised in digital format.
  • Mashups: e.g. themed compilations.
  • Evolving books updated on the fly.
  • New income streams: ads, sponsorship, subscription, pay per view.
  • New products and new channels should attract new readers.
  • Booksellers who think digitally will represent digital product alongside physical books: e.g. Dymocks in Australia with in-store kiosks offering digital product, with service duplicated on website.
• Fundamental questions:
  • Can our industry recognise and address challenges?
  • Can those affected by fear or waiting to see what happens overcome their
    fear and seize the opportunity?
  • Can the industry transfer its skills and creativity to new media?

Meg Pickard, Head of Communities and User Experience, guardian.co.uk.

• Guardian.co.uk has the largest online reach of any UK newspaper.
• Significant international reach.
• Guardian has to keep innovating and challenging its readers.
• Models:
  • At first, Publisher > Content > User
  • This model is authoritative, passive - a “lean back” experience.
  • Then, Publisher > Content <> User
  • This model is a bit more “lean forward”.
  • Now the model is, Publisher <> Content <> User <> User… <> Publisher
• The notion used to be that content is king, but now it is context.
• There’s a continuum of user participation in media: Consumption > Interaction > Curation > Creation.
• Users are increasingly curators of their own experience, via RSS, bricolage approach to news etc.
• User generated content still requires a good editor — though that editor may now be a group or community rather than an individual.
• We should think about what we publish as the start of a journey/conversation.

Genevieve Shore, Global Digital Director, Penguin.

• Changes in media: music industry sat on its heels and lost 50% of its size in ten years. Likewise, television didn’t foresee on-demand. Meanwhile, gaming has overtaken all other media — e.g. xbox Live attracting 1m visitors per day over the launch weekend for Grand Theft Auto 4.
• Imagine a world where 15% of sales are digital (getting to this point took the music business only three years).
• Myth: new media have replaced reading.
  • The question isn’t whether children want to read, but whether we as an industry are relevant to them.
• Myth: conventional reading and the bookshop are dying.
  • Yes, internet and downloads are growing, but still face obstacles.
  • Shelfari (1m users), Good Reads (20m reviews), LibraryThing — more people are talking/connecting about books than ever before.
• Myth: all content will be free, as users won’t pay, will steal, and will file share.
  • Yet our sales continue to grow.
  • Consumers will pay if they feel that they have value for money — however, don’t set prices too low before we’ve even started.
  • People will pay for customisation/personalisation.
  • People will pay for immediacy.
• 3 billion mobile phones in the world — as market for new devices slows, content will become important to device manufacturers and represents an opportunity for publishers.
• Moving toward a micro- rather than macro-economy.

Part two of my notes will follow, as and when I recover the will to live.

Of all of the web services that I use, Twitter is the hardest to explain: many people, even relatively clueful friends and colleagues don’t get it. To me, its value is three-fold. Firstly, the microblogging aspect is great for those times when I’d like to capture a moment or thought, but wouldn’t necessarily have the time or inclination to fire up Wordpress and write a full blog piece. Secondly, it’s a valuable means of communication with friends, sitting at the confluence of the web/IM/SMS Venn diagram. Finally, Twitter has been a means to make and cement friendships with people I might not otherwise have met.

However, I’m beginning to feel as though Twitter has passed a tipping point for me and is no longer as useful as it once was. As with all social networks, it boils down to people: as Jemima Kiss recently observed in passing, “it takes months to build up, or curate, if you like, a really useful, relevant and manageable group.”

The manageable aspect is fundamental. Discounting RSS feeds syndicated to Twitter, and other automatic updates, the forty seven people in my network have generated over 600 updates in the last twenty four hours — not an atypical level of traffic — and the volume is such that I can’t keep up with it.

The immediate solution which springs to mind is to prune my network back to a manageable level (dead-heading seems far too unkind a term for it). But doing so inevitably means that the people I know least will be the ones to go. This time last year I didn’t know @sizemore, but through Twitter I’ve come to know someone with whom I’ve enjoyed fascinating conversations, both online and in person. Without following someone who was initially a stranger, I wouldn’t have started experimenting with QR codes, or had lunch with Jessa from Bookslut. So I wonder what I might miss if I start cutting back my network.

In the meantime, any thoughts on achieving a manageable Twitter network would be very welcome.

The reason that I’ve been thinking about this subject is that I’ve recently come across four examples of good notebooks:

• Top of the heap, in terms of cost and wow factor, are these custom, laser-engraved Moleskine notebooks [via Mike].
• James has veered away from Moleskines in favour of making his own notebooks through lulu.com, using a classic book cover [via Booktwo].
• Mark Frauenfelder links to some handsome graph paper notebooks “inspired by the vanishing subgenre of agricultural memo books, ornate pocket ledgers and the simple, unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list” [via BoingBoing].
• Finally, I rather like some of the Right Note range of notebooks - they sell a splendid ”Action” notebook, with Buchanesque thirties pulp cover, for recording “stupefyingly important things to do.” Unfortunately, their website isn’t as good as their products — though it is being redeveloped.

• Kieron Smith is Managing Director at Retail8, which is some kind of bookselling skunk works. His new blog Koob is currently counting down the days to the beta launch of their Bookrabbit service. Kieron is an acquaintance of mine — although we’ve never worked together, our career paths have run close at several points — and I’m fascinated to see what he’s up to.
• I’ve also begun reading the Exact Editions blog, which is run by Adam Hodgkin, who it transpires was also at Tools of Change, though we didn’t connect there.
• Finally, Electric Alphabet is a look at writing and publishing in the digital age, with some interesting thoughts on RSS, recommendation engines and freeconomics, among other topics.

Unboxing it, one finds the reader in a smart leather holder, documentation, a software CD and a USB cable which takes care of both charging and transferring content. The use of a single cable is a real plus point for me: my working week includes a lot of travel, and the last thing I want to have to carry is another cable, much less a charger. (The fact that it’ll also charge my BlackBerry via USB is even better). Sony reckon that the reader’s battery is good for 7,500 page turns, and though I can’t corroborate this as I have yet to recharge it, this tallies with my usage so far.

The PRS-505 follows the earlier PRS-500, and is smaller in every dimension: a relatively modest .6mm less in height and 1.6mm less in width, but 5.8mm thinner — a little smaller than a large Moleskine notebook. Although the brushed metal construction makes it heavier than a paperback, it’s also sturdy and looks terrific. The leather case is high quality and protects the reader from knocks and scratches. There’s a very definite wow factor with the reader, which didn’t obtain with the more functional-looking PRS-500: several of my friends, none of them technophiles, have fallen in love with it.

The included software is Windows-only. However, this doesn’t present too great a problem: when the reader is connected to a non-Windows system, it appears as a USB mass storage device, allowing files to be transferred manually. I’ve tried it with XP Pro, Vista, OS X and, of course, eeeXubuntu. It’s worked perfectly each time. There’s 256mb of internal memory, and slots for Memory Stick Duo and SD cards.

It copes with a variety of file formats, including Sony’s proprietary BBeB (LRF), PDF, text files and RTF. It will also display images and play some audio files, though I haven’t explored these areas as yet. Viewing PDFs can be awkward as the text doesn’t resize and reflow as other documents do, and the ability to edit and annotate documents would also be desirable. However, these are relatively minor quibbles given that the overall experience is so positive: compared with a laptop screen, reading longer documents on the Sony is sufficiently pleasant to outweigh any inconvenience suffered in converting and transferring files.

The speed of the page turn seems to be a very definite improvement on the PRS-500, though there is still a very perceptible flash of the screen each time the page turns. At first this can seem a slightly jarring experience, but the remarkable thing is how little time it takes one to learn to ignore it.

There’s been a slight change of control layout from the PRS-500. The earlier model had many of the controls on the left hand side and bottom of the screen. There are now page turn controls at bottom left and on the centre of the right hand side, along with the numbered keys used for menu selection. This layout makes the reader somewhat more comfortable for right-handers to use — though as a left-hander I also found it perfectly pleasant. A nice touch is that holding the text zoom button for a few seconds changes the display from portrait to landscape, and vice versa.

Altogether I’m impressed with the PRS-505, both for reading e-books and as a convenient way of transporting and reading my own documents.

There are some terrific photos of the conference on Flickr from photographer James Duncan Davidson.

Some general observations about the conference:

• The quality of the presentations was excellent — I can’t remember the last time I went to an event where the standard was so consistently high.
• I’ve never seen so many iPhones — in fact, it seemed that there were as many iPhones in the room as BlackBerries.
• I’ve long been used to the fact that everyone in British publishing is individual enough to use Moleskine notebooks; it’s reassuring to see that the same is true of our American colleagues. In fact, iPhone, MacBook Pro and Moleskine seemed to be the default productivity set-up.
• My Asus EEE really came into its own for blogging the conference, though it did highlight that battery life is a major issue. I’ve heard talk of aftermarket batteries with greater endurance: they can’t come soon enough.
• The EEE was also a hit with everyone who saw it: I had complete strangers coming up and asking questions about it several dozen times a day, everywhere from the conference sessions to the hotel bar. It was really good to have so many conversations about it — one has never felt so popular.
• The Sony PRS-505 e-book reader is very shiny — more on which anon here.