I just got home from a really great conference. Hosted by the Bookseller’s digital division, Futurebook, it saw lots of publishing types (myself included) come together to discuss The Future, focusing specifically on book publishing. Often when you go to digital discussions, there are people from all sorts of industries, and while that can be beneficial, it can also be a bit depressing. For example, if a company like McDonalds or Adidas talks about how they made some revolutionary online marketing campaign spending a paltry £20m, I usually come away feeling a bit sad for the poor old book industry with our tiny marketing budgets.

But because this was really focused on books, and how we can make the book world a more responsive, bigger and better industry, the ideas were relevant and most of the speakers were really interesting. There were one or two who were a bit dry, but possibly only because of my own natural “I NEED FOOD” lull.

Some notes from the talk:

• Growth of e-books is slower than expected in the UK (Phillip Jones of The Bookseller) - with Amazon having now released their first set of sales figures, and the iPad now selling their iBooks, I wonder how this will change over the next year. From the survey that The Bookseller ran, it seemed as though people were generally quite negative about e-book sales, still not seeing them as a big part of their business. If I’m honest, I probably feel the same way sometimes, but if Waterstone’s have already sold over a million e-books, then surely with more players in the market the numbers can only go up and up?
• You need change ALL through a business to make a difference - it is not enough to say you want to change the way you do things, you need to foster a culture where change is possible - culture beats strategy every time (Simon Waldman)
• Richard Mollet, now at the Publisher’s Association, previously of the music industry, had a few good points. I did feel that he started to demonise illegal downloaders quite a lot, but a couple of things he said stuck with me: the physical product is still important but habits change - physical sales still make up 85% of album sales in the UK, even though single sales have gone almost entirely digital, and people will probably never abandon books altogether; and you cannot price compete with free. Bringing the price down does not, therefore, necessarily discourage copyright infringement (not sure if I agree with this, but it’s an interesting idea). He also talked about creating good habits in e-book buying. When Radiohead released one of their albums for free online, 250,000 people STILL went to Limewire to download it because that was what they were used to doing. How do you get people to see the legal route as their first option? DRM pisses people off and doesn’t prevent piracy, so what’s the solution?
• Google Editions is out in the US before Christmas! Jason Hanley of Google talked about the virtuous circle they are planning with Google Books and Google Editions working together to promote and sell books across any platform
• Nick Harkaway (who looked COMPLETELY different from what I imagined him to look like, which was kind of weird) talked about selling the lifestyle of the book - reading as part of slow living - switch off your phone, turn off the tv, get comfy and read a book - that is certainly how I like to read best! He also mentioned a marketing ploy he had seen where if you bought a hard copy of one author’s book, you could get a DVD within it with all of their previous books as un-DRMed pdfs - I really like that idea.
• Max Whitby sold the entire audience on his app, The Elements. Definitely going to get that onto the department iPad. I absolutely desperately want a Periodic Table Table. It looks amazing. Very funny speaker, too. Touch Press, the company that Max started, is now working with Faber on an app that they are developing.
• On that note, Henry Volans of Faber spoke to us about the partnerships they have developed with app creators and talked us through a couple of really exciting projects they are working on, including a ‘transmedia’ version of Malcolm Tucker’s iPhone and a QI library (both with Agant, who we worked with on the Tess Daly app, and who are LOVELY). What I thought was brilliant about his presentation (and the approach Faber are taking to digital publishing) is that in his role he has no obligation to follow print publishing.  I think that a lot of really exciting stuff is going to come out of the Faber team in the next few years, so will definitely be keeping an eye on what they’re doing.
• HOWEVER, I did find the presentation from Ben Grass (of Pure Grass Films) quite terrifying. Their company is developing another ‘transmedia’ book type thing with Hodder. It is a novel, ebook, game, app, website and more. Each element tells a different part of the series, and you can get the back story, watch videos, become the character etc. I think it is a fascinating idea, but as a reader, I am not keen. Although I do like finding out more about a book, I essentially just want to have a great book to read. When I read I want to switch off, not have to be connected to all these other stories that are happening around it. But that’s just me.
• Then came Lisa Edwards’ presentation about Horrible Histories. They have all sorts of licensing deals - from city buses to top trumps to a DS game, but she showed two clips which absolutely had me in stitches. The first was from a play about Egypt - the audience members are given 3D bogglevision glasses in the intermission, and when they come back, all sorts of mummies and ghouls fly out at them from the stage - the kids in the audience went MENTAL with screaming. So cute. The second was just funny - Charles II as the King of Bling.

There were lots of interesting points to pick out of the day - Scott Pack was great and the things Macmillan are doing with their Nature Network were also really interesting, but those were really my highlights.

I have only been in the industry for 3 1/2 years and already in that time things have changed dramatically. There are definitely those who are resistant to change in the industry, but there are also so many people in books who are forward looking and passionate about what they do. Days like today, getting everyone together to talk about what’s working for them (or not) and share some of the knowledge they are gaining in their particular companies, make me feel incredibly lucky again to be working in this industry. Thanks to everyone who worked on the conference for putting such a great day together.