ECPA has assembled a cast of eminent presenters and experts to help your company’s executive leadership team strategize for the future.

Digital Publishing & Digital Distribution: Strategies & Experiences from Trade Publishing

Moderated by Michael Healy, President, Book Industry Study Group

The largest publishers in the U.S. trade sector are actively planning, investing and experimenting to capitalize on what they believe to be the opportunities presented by digital publishing and distribution. In this session, senior figures from the general trade publishing industry will share some of the strategies being pursued with executives and senior managers of Christian publishers.

Thinking Digital
Preparing your company for a future in which content is prepared, produced, distributed, sold, marketed and consumed electronically requires you to think differently about every facet of your business. How do you maintain today’s successful business while planning for the changes ahead? How do you prepare a systematic, end-to-end digital strategy and what are the critical foundations necessary for success going forward? In this presentation a leading trade publisher will describe how his/her company has started “to think and behave digitally” and what preparations are required to change attitudes, processes and systems for a successful digital future.
Technical foundations for business success

Presented by Bob Kasher, Director of Sales, MacMillan Publishing Solutions

Investing in the technology necessary to publish and distribute digital content is costly. Integrating new technology into existing editorial, production, marketing and distribution workflows can be expensive, time-consuming, and risky. How do you develop a technology strategy to meet your company’s needs going forward? Many new services and partners have emerged to help deal with the challenges of managing and distributing digital assets. Is partnership the right choice for every publisher and, if so, how do you determine your requirements and evaluate potential partners? In this presentation a leading trade publisher will describe how his/her company planned and implemented their technology strategy, integrated it into existing processes and systems, and what they learned along the way. S/he will share experiences of selecting and working with a technology partner in the development of their digital strategy.

Re-thinking Content and Business Models in the Digital Age

Presented by Allen Noren, Director, Online Marketing and Digital Initiatives, O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Technology is not just changing how content is produced, delivered and consumed. It’s changing fundamentally how publishers think about content itself. In response to changing reading and purchasing habits among book buyers, many publishers are experimenting in different ways with their content. Some are publishing parts or fragments (such as chapters). Others are enabling consumers to create customized content, selecting and mixing content from one or more publishers. Pricing and business models are changing too, with publishers experimenting with book rentals, free content, and advertizing-driven content. Innovations such as these are provoking difficult questions about the management of rights and how they are protected in a digital supply chain. Noren will describe how O’Reilly is experimenting with these innovative models and the lessons learned.

Strategies for Digital Marketing

Presented by Nicole Poindexter, President of Unbound Media Inc.

Developments in technology are transforming how book content – both digital and printed - is marketed. Reading devices such as the Kindle, the Sony E-Reader, and the iPhone; “look inside” services from Barnes & Noble and Amazon; social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace; new marketing tools like widgets - all these recent innovations offer publishers a variety of new ways and channels to promote both digital and printed content. How are trade publishers responding to these opportunities? Which should you choose and which can you ignore? What has worked and what has failed? In this presentation a leading trade publisher will describe how these new devices, channels, and tools have changed how book content is marketed and how his/her company evaluates risk and reward in these new and untested areas.

Biography
Michael Healy is the Executive Director of the Book Industry Study Group, an organization based in New York City which was established thirty years ago with the mission of creating a more efficient and informed supply chain for the U.S. book industry.

Michael has more than 20 years experience in the book industry. Prior to joining BISG in 2006, he was Editorial Director for seven years at Nielsen BookData, a leading supplier of information, transaction and market measurement services to the international book trade.

For much of his career Michael has been closely involved with supply chain issues and particularly with the development and maintenance of book trade standards in areas such as product identification, metadata and electronic commerce. He chaired the ISO international working group that developed ISBN-13 and is a past Chairman of the International ISBN Agency.