Just spent part of the day at a digital publishing conference hosted by Book Business Magazine. It was excellent! The web interface worked perfectly, I met some interesting folks and I enjoyed the presentations.
In particular, I was interested in:
Jane Friedman, Open Road, who’s republishing classic authors in ebook form. Open Road plans to use multimedia to enhance the books, like offering extras on DVDs, but not as part of the overall reading experience as she believes it to be a distraction of the reading experience (I beg to differ)
Erik Qualman, Socialnomics, who spoke of following Dale Carnegie’s lead when marketing: listen, interact, react and then sell. He also suggested that the biggest mistake many marketers make is the socially unacceptable practice of jumping from listening straight to selling; reminding the audience to take the time to develop relationships before pitching products (found most of his ideas more suited to those with a larger presence than an indie like me)
Jesse McDougall, Catalyst Webworks, who offered great tips on social media marketing, especially suggesting integrating clickable “share” links on your website/blog to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, etc. (something I’ve got to figure out!) He echoed Qualman’s position that interacting and building a community are key to marketing success.
Best of all: the conference presentations are available online for free for the next 3 months at Digital Content Day @ Your Desk. Check it out.
Appreciate your stopping by!