Is Your Organization Confronting Digital Change?
All publishers have had to deal with changes to their business due to the rise of digital book reading. At the recent Publishing Business Virtual Conference & Expo (a production of Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines), an expert panel convened to discuss strategies for publishers who need to begin transitioning their workflows to accomodate the myriad digital products the marketplace is demanding.
Chris Lederer, a director with AlixPartners and a veteran of publishers such as Open Road and HarperCollins, opened with a high-level perspective on the strategic implications of digital change (complete with references to Roger Sterling and Mashall McLuhan). Lederer wondered, for starters, if publishers were indeed confronting digital change, or if digital change was confronting publishers. He made a compelling case that book publishers need to enter the 2.0 phase of digital publishing, explaining that 1.0 was the experimental phase.
Next, Ania Wieckowski, Managing Editor at Harvard Business Review Press, gave a detailed case study of the launch of the Harvard Business Review Singles program, a short-form product (10,000-25,000 words; $2.99-$3.99) content line. Wieckowski discussed the why and how of the launch, and how it's impacted the Press' editorial, production, oeprations and marketing efforts.
Holly Gilly, VP of Product Development at Human Kinetics, brought it all home, speaking on how the publisher of sports science products has begun the migration to a strategic content management system that is allowing it to shift from a print-first workflow to a format-agnostic/XML-early process that facilitates in-house production across multiple channels.
Packed with great, practical, use-it-now information, the session is available on demand now. (Registration required.)