Last year, nearly 3,700 book publishing professionals from across North America convened in New York City for BookTech, the only event focused on the latest technologies and techniques in the book and e-book publishing industry. The total attendance surpassed the previous year by 21 percent, and was demonstrated by a packed exhibit hall, crowded keynote address, and standing room only conference rooms.
The event featured industry experts from leading companies such as Microsoft, Adobe Systems, ContentGuard, The Lehigh Press, The Mazor Corp., Simon & Schuster and World Book, among others. Leading publishers spoke of hot topics like ASP's, e-book formatting, marketing and distribution, and print on-demand.
"Professionals and entrepreneurs in the e- and p-spaces of publishing and manufacturing can find BookTech events a cornucopia of useful information, networking, and updates on the dynamically evolving infrastructure of our industry," says Eugene Schwartz, editor-at-Large for ForeWord, as reported in the weekly ForeWord e-newsletter.
In addition, vendors and suppliers made a number of announcements at BookTech . For example, Franklin Electronic Publishers released its content conversion developers' kit (CDK) for the Franklin Reader, enabling publishers to produce e-books for the eBookMan multimedia platform based on proprietary SGML; and Indraweb made its debut, unveiling its new technology and service that allows traditional publishers to make S-books of their content. netLibrary, Oce, OverDrive, Questia.com, among others, also released new products/services.
"The quality of the sessions, speakers, attendees, and vendors is a testament to our continuing commitment to provide the nation's foremost business event for book publishing professionals," explains Gretchen Kirby, last year's conference coordinator and former editor of BookTech the Magazine. "With so many new technologies available to support the digital publishing process, BookTech provides the unique opportunity for publishers to share their companies strategies for adapting to the changing times."