Preparing for the Industry’s Future

The 2008 Publishing Business Conference & Expo—held March 10-12 in New York City— was the setting for a meeting of many of publishing’s top minds. With more than 1,000 book and magazine publishing industry executives in attendance, the Publishing Business Conference & Expo featured two-and-a-half days of intensive conference sessions addressing the biggest issues facing publishers today. Held concurrently, the expo hosted more than 100 exhibitors showcasing publishing technologies and services.

The show, which this year featured its new Publishing Business brand, is produced by Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines and follows in the footsteps of the BookTech Conference & Expo.

“The evolution of production- centric BookTech into Publishing Business came to maturity in 2008. While we still have some work ahead to make the brand recognized deep in every major publishing company, attendees and exhibitors communicated loud and clear that they were extremely pleased with the quality of the content and the productive networking of this year’s show,” says Mark Hertzog, Book Business vice president/group publisher and Publishing Business Conference & Expo director. “The Publishing Business Conference & Expo has become the one annual event publishing executives must attend to fi ll up on business intelligence from the brightest minds in the industry.”

Nearly 150 speakers led close to 50 sessions, many standing-room-only, and provided attendees with strategies and tactics to tackle the most pressing issues facing their businesses and careers.

“The conference has been growing signifi cantly over the past few years, and this year not only followed that trend, but I think in terms of the content presented and the caliber of speakers, it was perhaps our best event ever,” says Noelle Skodzinski, Book Business editor in chief and Publishing Business Conference program director. “The publishing industry is at a pivotal point …, and executives have so many questions about how best to approach the future. The conference addressed many of those questions and hopefully provided attendees with a number of practical strategies for facing the change that is upon us.”