Book Business Attending BookExpo America and IDPF Digital Book 2014

This week Book Business will be attending BookExpo America and the IDPF Digital Book 2014. I encourage you to look for our associate editor Ellen Harvey and myself as we cruise the exhibit halls and educational sessions. Please stop us and say hello. (Or drop us an email at dwilson@napco.com or eharvey@napco.com.)

Today I'll primarily be attending sessions at the IDPF two-day conference focused on advancing digital publishing. Wednesday morning's sessions will set the stage with a big picture look at the digital trends reshaping the industry. Then in the afternoon, the conference will start to break into its three parallel tracks: Business and Marketing; Technology, Design and Production; and Education and Professional Publishing.

Hoping I can keep up with the technical side of things, I plan to attend the "P+E Production: Best Practices Panel," which will cover content and production strategies for multi-channel digital publishing. Another session that catches the eye is "Using Digital Reading & Writing Innovation to Engage New Audiences," which appears to take a rare optimistic view on the opportunities created by technology -- in this case the benefits of technology-enabled audience building will be addressed by folks from Booktrack, Aerbook, Wattpad, and Kobo.

I'm also particularly interested in attending some of the subscription model-focused sessions on Thursday at the IDPF. New for 2014, the IDPF has partnered with BISG to offer attendees the BISG Making Information Pay conference, subtitled "Digital Books and the New Subscription Economy."

There remain a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to the subscription model and the true revenue it may offer publishers. If the subscription services are the "Spotify of books" as they are touted, there should be a serious discussion about what this model can do for the book industry. In the music industry, Spotify certainly didn't come along and save the day and a great debate remains over whether the service is tenable for anyone but the music publishers doing incredible volume.