Top 4 Tweets from Book Business Live: Executive Summit on Digital Publishing
You may have noticed #BBLive15 floating around the Twitterverse yesterday as publishers shared their take on the newest publishing event from Book Business. Yesterday marked the launch of the first ever Book Business Live: Executive Summit on Digital Publishing. We gathered more than 70 publishers from trade, education, and academic publishing segments to discuss some of the most pressing issues in the industry -- from managing organizational change in the digital era to maximizing data collection and analysis.
We've collected some of our favorite tweets from the day and shared them below. Look for more coverage on Book Business Live to come and a deeper dive into each panel discussion.
One of the biggest takeaways from our first panel, Transforming Your Company for the New Era of Digital Publishing, was the importance of creating book content that can easily adapt to different platforms and devices. As Hachette's executive director of digital publishing technology Phil Madans pointed out, trying to create multiple digital products out of a PDF is akin to building an airplane out of a Chevy Malibu.
Heard at #BBLive15 - "Don't try to build an airplane out of a Chevy Malibu." -- @philmadans
— denis wilson (@denis_philly) March 31, 2015
In our second panel, which focused on how publishers are collecting and implementing data in their organizations, Cengage Learning VP of analytics Tom Breur implored publishers to be diligent about data retrieval and avoid shortcuts. Those fast solutions could undermine the accuracy of an entire dataset, said Breur.
Problem with "Quick & Dirty" data analytics solutions: long after benefit of wick passes you're living with dirty. @tombreur #BBLive15
— Paul Belfanti (@soxionado) March 31, 2015
And on that same panel, Breur's fellow panelists Adam Silverman, senior director of digital business development at HarperCollins, and Andrew Weinstein, VP of content acquisition at Scribd, debated the benefits of collecting specific data that answers business questions or broad data that reflects an entire market. Silverman maintained that in this early stage of data collection in the book industry, it's imperative that publishers collect and store as much information as they possibly can about their audiences and products.
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Love this @AWeinstein28 and @adamtsilverman : get a firehose of data (Adam) or get data that answers specific q's (Andrew)? #BBLive15
— MunsonFan (@MatthewBaldacci) March 31, 2015
In the final session of the day, which dove into the benefits of D2C marketing and sales strategies, Mary Ann Naples, SVP and publisher of Rodale Books, explained how she's using content marketing to engage her audience and funnel them toward a book purchase. She maintained that deep engagement with content is a much better indication of purchase intent than a passive like or follow.
Tingles and bells going off for the D2C panel @manaples leading the way with wellness #BBLive15
— katetravers (@katetravers) March 31, 2015
Ellen Harvey is a freelance writer and editor who covers the latest technologies and strategies reshaping the publishing landscape. She previously served as the Senior Editor at Publishing Executive and Book Business.