"The Future of Our Business ... Is About Data": A Q&A With New Industry Study Group Executive Director Scott Lubeck

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) will expand its print and digital product initiatives in the next few years, says the group's new executive director, Scott Lubeck, who presided over his first BISG board of directors meeting Jan. 21.

The organization is attempting to provide the book publishing industry with more training, best practices, policy statements, education and research to help it adapt to changing times. And Lubeck comes to BISG with experience in “repositioning technology and media-related businesses, as well as entrepreneurial leadership in developing these kinds of new business opportunities,” said Dominique Raccah, co-chair of the BISG board, in a statement announcing Lubeck's appointment.

Lubeck, who has more than 30 years of publishing industry experience and most recently served as vice president of technology for Wolters Kluwer Health, takes the reins now that BISG's former executive director, Michael Healy, has become the first executive director of the Book Rights Registry, an entity created as a result of the Google Book Search settlement agreement.

Lubeck spoke with Book Business Extra about BISG's plans for the coming year and beyond.

Book Business Extra: What issues and initiatives are at the top of BISG's agenda for 2010?
Scott Lubeck: … One [key initiative] that we're right in the middle of ... is our research around consumer attitudes toward e-book devices and e-books themselves. And we've just released the first of three research studies.

This is not a generalized study of the consumption of e-content online, which would be outside of our purview and probably outside of the available data on such a subject. But [BISG is] really focusing on book buyers—known book buyers' behaviors. We've identified a very robust panel of book buyers who then bought e-books, and then [we] surveyed them … to elicit their behaviors around purchasing [and] consuming e-books.