BISG Making Information Pay 2008

I was fortunate enough to attend this year's BISG conference, and will share some highlights:

1. The theme of the conference was experimentation.
2. BISG survey showed that non-trade publishers, more than their trade counterparts, believe that experimentation is important; however, the trade ones believe they experiment more than their non-trade counterparts.
3. Author and Dr. Michael E. Raynor spoke about strategy and innovation. He pointed out that upper management tends to have more uncertainty and experimentation, whereas lower management, to succeed at their tasks, need to be certain and committed.
4. Carolyn Pittis, Senior VP of Global Marketing Strategy and Operations at HarperCollins, discussed innovations that HarperCollins has implemented on a global scale. For example, their UK office launched a preteen website based around a series character; while HC books are included, they are only included and advertised contextually: the focus of the website is more community-driven than sales-driven. HarperCollins has also helped their authors--and themselves--by making it very easy for their authors to create personal websites and they offer a "search inside" feature on their website, which has increased sales and traffic.
5. Michael Cader spoke about his success with Publisher's Lunch and Marketplace, which is due to iteration and constantly adapting their offerings based on what their customers wanted and/or needed, and doing so in a way that kept overhead and costs down. To him, "innovation is iteration."
6. Todd Anderson, Director of the University of Alberta Bookstore, spoke about their experience with POD and how, as soon as their store got the Espresso Book Machine and it became known to the public, they were inundated with POD requests of all sorts. He also showed a funny video: they had been lucky to have the machine work perfectly each time media came to visit, except this once when the camera showed an error that Todd and the reporter didn't notice until the cameraman pointed it out to them.
7. The Innovator's roundtable included Malle Vallik from Harlequin, Gwen Jones from John Wiley & Sons, Neil DeYoung from Hachette Book Group USA, and Julie Grau from Random House.

Overall, as Carolyn Pittis said at the end, it is warming to see how far and fast publishers have been able to adapt to the ever-changing world of media with innovation and experimentation.