The Book Industry Study Group

E-books have created both opportunity and havoc for publishers. Readers have begun to love (or at least claim to love) the benefits of e-reading on a screen. However, the processes for traditional book creation, distribution and use (based on a physical artifact) are fundamentally different from those of a fluid information medium.

It's difficult to imagine that the International Digital Publishing Forum's (IDPF) Digital Book 2010 could ever be compared to Woodstock; but, in fact, this year's sold-out event had a few sessions that were so crowded that dozens of people sat on the floor in the back of the room so as not to be in the way of the standing-room only crowd lining the room's back wall. Michael Smith, IDPF's executive director, joked that it looked like Woodstock.

In my last post,  I wrote about—heck, I guaranteed—that XML wasn’t going anywhere. I’m usually not such a big trash talker, but I firmly believe this—mostly because you can use XML to future-proof content, as well as the fact that putting any structured tagging in your content could be leveraged, even if XML goes away. Which it won’t (I know, nice English).

Opening his presentation with an image of a woman sitting on a beach with an e-reader, Kelly Gallagher told the crowd of book publishing professionals gathered at the seventh-annual Book Industry Study Group's "Making Information Pay" event last week, "She doesn't care about this meeting today," making the point that the issues and challenges now facing the industry are publishers' responsibilities to solve for the consumer. Gallagher, vice president of publishing services for bibliographic information provider RR Bowker, was one of about a dozen speakers to address the audience at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City. 

You can take the New Yorker out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the New Yorker. This is an important benefit if you are an ex-New Yorker (New York City, that is) like me, living upstate in the Hudson Valley and boarding before-dawn Metro North trains that get me to Grand Central Terminal in time for breakfast meetings, such as the one I just attended in the auditorium at the McGraw-Hill Building on Avenue of the Americas and 49th Street.

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and EDItEUR—the international body that maintains ONIX product information standards—working in collaboration with representatives from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the U.K. Publishers Association (PA), have made provisions to the "ONIX for Books" standards to allow for a standard means of communicating agency model sales terms for e-books.

The consumer market for U.S. book publishers has changed significantly in the past three years, driven largely by fundamental shifts in the way books are published, found and ultimately purchased by readers. These changes sometimes leave publishers with more questions than answers in determining what their next move ought to be to keep pace with today's consumer.

The Gilbane Group, a division of Outsell, Inc., and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) today announced a strategic partnership to help members of the book industry community succeed through innovative uses of technology. Together, Gilbane and BISG will provide market-centric research and actionable guidance for book industry professionals—from publishers to wholesalers—seeking to profit from the “digital revolution.”

Lubeck to preside over January 2010 BISG Board of Directors Meeting.

It is a difficult time to be an independent book publisher. Fractured distribution models, soaring manufacturing costs, technology changing at breakneck speeds and the ongoing global recession are just a few of the threats coming at indies from all directions.