Adam Silverman

Tom Breur, VP of data analytics at Cengage, Adam Silverman, senior director of digital business development at HarperCollins, and Andrew Weinstein, VP of content acquisition at Scribd share great tips for integrating data insights into a publishing organization.

You may have noticed #BBLive15 floating around the Twitterverse yesterday as publishers shared their take on the newest publishing event from Book Business. Yesterday marked the launch of the first ever Book Business Live: Executive Summit on Digital Publishing. We gathered more than 70 publishers from trade, education, and academic publishing segments to discuss some of the most pressing issues in the industry -- from managing organizational change in the digital era to maximizing data collection and analysis.

We're pounding the hard concrete floors of the Javits Center today — it's day 1 of our Book Expo coverage, as we juggle sessions at two compelling events packed with content: IDPF Digital Book 2013 and Publishers Launch. My colleague Lynn Rosen and I have each gathered snippets of wisdom to share with our readers from presentations we have heard today.

This morning at the International Digital Publishing Forum's Digital Book 2013 Plenary Session, Laura Hazard Owen of paidContent.org interviewed Chantal Restivo-Alessi Chief Digital Officer of HarperCollins in a session titled: Digital Publishing In Transition: Steering a Course in the Middle of A Storm. Restivo-Alessi, who comes to publishing from the music business, noted some differences between the two industries, notably how music is more about selling individual songs rather than albums (not as much of a concern in book publishing). She noted great areas of opportunity in catalog reinvigoration through price promotions, but saw bigger gains to be made in product innovation, both with apps and with enhanced books.