Digital Book World (#DBW12) Wrap Up

5+ things we learned and are doing differently now

After an engaging, inspiring, and utterly packed Digital Book World Conference & Expo (DBW) last week, I started to pull together some of the more practical implications of the DBW and Publishers Launch Conferences for Sourcebooks:

1. Marketing: Integration & Better Data

The discussions on these subjects were outstanding and really identified several areas that we're moving forward on.

• Marketing is getting a whole review with implications for multiple departments: publicity, marketing, editorial, and sales.
• Metadata is getting yet another pass. We’re going to be integrating with SEO and taking on a backlist review project.
• Data dashboarding is now a top priority. How quickly can we get information, make decisions, communicate, and change directions? This new thought process was probably the highlight of the show for me.

2. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) & Metrics

Lots of important discussion and thinking around data and metrics. Sourcebooks has a management quarterly next week to review performance and plans. This will be focused on key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. Again, much to think about and push forward.

3. New Ventures

DBW was a great show for creating new opportunities. We met four new companies (with interesting business proposals or models) with whom we expect to be doing business in 2012. There’s some new thinking in unexpected areas.

4. Partners

It was wonderful to have meetings with many of our current partners and to discuss expanding our relationships. This is a rapidly changing space and everyone was abuzz with new work and new ideas in both the digital and physical book marketplace. Five of our partners have some big things brewing, and yes, we’re absolutely going to be participating.

5. Illustrated eBooks

Unbelievably, I saw two new opportunities at the illustrated book panel. Let’s see if I can convince anyone else in my organization to try these out.

This is obviously not all:

• Lots of data points that I'’m still thinking about. I suspect there are some new ideas, experiments brewing.
• There were other Sourcebooks folks at DBW – what they learned and how that may change, impact, redirect this preliminary list
• Lots of big industry-wide conversations: DRM, libraries, rights and royalties, worldwide English language, the rapidly developing global marketplace and more

We thank you for the warm reception to our new Agile Publishing Model and our partnership with futurist David Houle.

And a special thank you to David Nussbaum, Mike Shatzkin, Michael Cader, Jess Johns, Matt Mullin and all of the DigitalBookWorld and Publishers Launch Conferences team for their hard work and commitment!

The thing that warmed my heart the most was the level of conversation and engagement between lots of different industry members. Some conversations were difficult. Sure. But most were productive and engaging.

I hope others will share their learnings, thinking and/or questions.

Dominique