Book Business Conference‘Strikes Chord’ With Publishing Executives

A lively question-and-answer session with the audience presented the question of whether CDs and DVDs will remain relevant in a time when flash drives and iPods are becoming increasingly more popular. Coho pointed to recent studies alleviating these concerns, saying, “Statistics show that CD sales and production is going to continue through 2017, and then it is going to level off.”

So while the 2006 Book Business/BookTech Conference and Expo’s expansion led to the most diverse collection of attendees in its 10-year history, Kreisky touched on a common theme affecting nearly everyone in today’s industry: “The challenge for traditional media is how to engage with this new audience by using our skills to create and distribute dynamic, exciting content,” he said. “As long as publishers create must-read, must-have content and deliver it in the medium that suits the reader, they will endure.”

Above, the “Multi-channel Marketing for Book Sales” panel, featuring (left to right) Sol Rosenberg (Dynamic DC), Suzanne Murphy (Scholastic), Deb Allen (Black Dome Press), Jeff Gomez (Holtzbrinck), Nicole Gallo (Rittenhouse Book Distributors), Peter Knapp (Wiley) and Sue Fleming (Simon & Schuster). At right, this year’s exhibit hall featured the industry’s top companies and two days of steady traffic.

Tuesday’s “Global Sourcing: Exploring Your Options” drew a packed room of attendees. The panel featured (left to right) Ken Coburn (Global Interprint), Craig Bauer (Houghton Mifflin), Andy Hughes (Knopf), Dave Mead (Banta Book Group) and Samir Kakar (TechBooks).