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London Book Fair

March 4, 2010 in General | No comments

I’m very pleased to be taking part in the London Book Fair’s third annual digital conference, Strategies for Transformation, which takes place at Earl’s Court on Sunday 18 April. I’m going to be chairing the final session, which is looking at the changes which digital introduces to publishing companies — and in particular how to move from innovating at the leading edge to making digital part of the core activity of a business. I’ll post again when the panellists for the session are confirmed, but in the meantime information on the conference is available here.

Then on the Wednesday of the Fair I’m going to be participating in a panel on some of the hot issues surrounding ebooks. It’s chaired by Laurence Kaye, and my fellow panellists are Richard Charkin of Bloomsbury and Peter Collingridge of Enhanced Editions.

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Blue Skies Conference

January 26, 2010 in General | 3 comments

I spent this morning at the Publishers Association’s Blue Skies and White Clouds: Ebook Strategies for 2010 and Beyond conference, which was full of extremely interesting views and opinions — some of which I’ve tried to summarise below.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Techradar Article

January 19, 2010 in General | No comments

Further to my last post, I was interviewed recently by Gary Marshall for this Techradar article on ebooks and copyright infringement. It’s a good introductory piece, touching on issues like the importance of standard formats, and the VAT disparity between print  and ebooks (something which industry groups such as the PA have been lobbying on).

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Blue Skies and White Clouds

January 7, 2010 in General | No comments

The Publishers Association will be hosting a discussion on ebooks on Tuesday 26th January, as part of the PA’s Digital Publishing Forum. Entitled Blue Skies and White Clouds: Ebook Strategies for 2010 and Beyond, it will explore what an open, flourishing ebook market might look like and how publishers, retailers and other partners can work together to enhance the customer experience. It’s being organised by colleagues of mine on the PA’s Digital Director’s Group.

This event is aimed at thought leaders in key stakeholder groups, including representatives of the author and agent communities; publishing directors with responsibility for strategy, legal, rights, IT and digital; and senior leaders in companies developing and selling digital services to the publishing industry.

Registration details are here.

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Predictions for 2010

January 4, 2010 in General | 3 comments

It’s the time of year for publishers and industry experts to make predictions for the year ahead — I’ve seen four such posts in the last few days alone, and started compiling the table below to aggregate their predictions for my own reference.

It’s interesting at this stage to see consensus on relatively few of these points. I’ve paraphrased many of the predictions where different phrasing was thematically similar, hopefully without losing any of the intended meaning. As and when I see other predictions for 2010, I’ll add them to the table — and please let me know if you’re the author of such a piece so I can include it (or shout at me if I’ve played fast and loose with your existing predictions).

Updated 4 January 9.30pm: Thanks very much indeed to Ted Treanor for getting in touch with his own set of predictions, now added to the table.

Updated 4 January 10.00pm: And no sooner had I posted the last update than Michael Cairns’s predictions appeared on Google Reader . . .

Updated 5 January 12.00pm: Thanks to Kassia Krozser for sending me a link to her predictions. Unfortunately, the table has now grown too unwieldy for my Wordpress template, so I’ve had to spin it off into a separate page, linked to below. I’ll prettify this when I have the chance — the last time I styled an HTML table was back when they were commonly used for layout, so I’ll have to do some CSS work.

I’ve also received links to longer term predictions — and I’ll work out how best to present these alongside the 2010 predictions.

Aggregated Predictions for Publishing in 2010

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Digital Strategy

December 14, 2009 in General | No comments

I’ve always enjoyed the Alex strip in the Telegraph, though it portrays a world remote to publishing. This somehow seemed rather relevant though.

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#intconf

December 10, 2009 in General | No comments

Thanks to my friends at the Publishers Association, I spoke this afternoon at their International Conference (#intconf on Twitter). I managed to forget to include the Shinseki quote, though it seemed to go well otherwise, and it was good to see many friends and colleagues in the room.

Several people were kind enough to ask for a copy of my Keynote deck, which can be downloaded here (PDF, 2MB).

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Change and Irrelevance

December 8, 2009 in General | 1 comment

I spoke at a conference in Oslo recently, and am currently finalising my speech for the Publishers Association’s International Conference on Thursday. Managing the pace of change associated with digital publishing is a key theme in both speeches and I had been trying to find a neat summary of the issues. Then I came across an especially resonant quote today which I think sums it up, via Tim O’Reilly on the Reading 2.0 list:

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
General Eric Shinseki

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Start with XML

September 2, 2009 in General | No comments

I spent most of today at the British Library, at the Start with XML conference. The great value of the day was that the presentations articulated very clearly not only the significant cultural and organisational challenges in publishers moving to an XML-first production workflow, but also the benefits in terms of increased efficiency. It was also great to see a number of friends and colleagues, many of them presenting their experiences, and to end a very long but rewarding day by having dinner in the expert company of Mike Shatzkin, Ken Brooks and Andrew Savikas. I’ve come away with several dozen pages of notes, a number of interesting tools and services to investigate, and a head full of ideas. Having been on the go for eighteen hours, I feel exhausted on one level, but also hugely enthused and buzzing with the potential of it all.

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Moving

June 3, 2009 in General | 7 comments

From an Hachette UK press release:

Hachette UK appoints Head of Digital and announces formation of a UK Digital Board

Wednesday 3rd June, 2009

Hachette UK today announces the appointment of George Walkley to the role of Head of Digital for the Hachette UK group (excluding Hodder Education).

George, who is currently Marketing Director and Director of Digital Strategy at Little, Brown Book Group, will take up the new role from July 1st, reporting to Richard Kitson, the Group’s Commercial Director. George will be responsible for enabling and driving implementation of digital initiatives and digital strategy across the Hachette UK publishers. The federal structure of Hachette UK and the publishing autonomy enjoyed by the individual publishers within the group means the role will involve constant interaction with and collaboration across the Hachette publishers in the UK and to some extent overseas. George will also be a key member of the Hachette UK Digital Board which will consist of representatives of senior management from across the UK group and which will be chaired by Tim Hely Hutchinson.

Hachette UK continues to make a significant investment in its digital infrastructure and digital publishing. The appointment of the Head of Digital is the latest in a rolling programme of important initiatives across the group which include the phased rollout of the Hachette Livre owned digital warehouse and distribution platform, Numilog, the continued development of and investment in ground-breaking educational digital product and the rapid expansion of trade digital publishing.

George has worked at Little, Brown Book Group for the last four years, having joined from Ottakar’s and has built up excellent experience in key roles at L,BBG. He is also involved in a number of industry-level initiatives through the Publishers Association and BIC, including chairing the TPC’s Territorial Rights Working Group.

Tim Hely Hutchinson said, “There are a great many high quality digital initiatives in progress across the Hachette UK group but the pace of change is so rapid that we have decided both to accelerate and coordinate our digital publishing work. I am particularly delighted that George Walkley has agreed to accept this important strategic leadership role. He has been a great success since he joined us; he has excellent specialist digital publishing knowledge and he has for some time been the person to whom all of us in the group have turned for help and advice on digital matters, so that I know his appointment will be widely welcomed.”

George Walkley said, “I am thrilled to be taking on this new role in such a dynamic, fast-moving area. I look forward to working with colleagues throughout Hachette to continue to improve our digital offer.”

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