I've recently noticed a handful of moves made by traditional book publishers to embrace digital technology and new distribution models.
TechCrunch reported this week, "Major Book Publishers Start Turning To Scribd":
Online document sharing site Scribd has announced that it has partnered with a number of major publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Co., Berrett-Koehler, Thomas Nelson, and Manning Publications, to legally offer some of their content to Scribd's community free of charge. Publishers have begun to add an array of content to Scribd's library, including full-length novels as well as briefer teaser excerpts.
Also, just yesterday Google and Sony announced a partnership to add half a million public domain Google Books to Sony's E-Reader product.
These are interesting moves to try new formats -- and a little reassuring -- especially after earlier this week at South by Southwest Interactive, a session entitled "New Think for Old Publishers" kind of crashed and burned. It was headlined by leading author, online and social media thinker, Clay Shirky, along with a panel of Penguin Books editors. The audience was filled with book fanatics, so it looked promising, but the publishers spent half the time talking about themselves and not about new ideas for publishing and interacting with the audience. It kinda ended on a sour note with frustrated audience members.
Here's a nice summary of what went down from Medialoper.com:
I suppose these publishers could be forgiven for not knowing the SXSW protocol, but usually you don't *give* a presentation unless you have something interesting and innovative to share. SXSW is the place to be if you're looking for new ideas, but usually those looking for new ideas *attend* sessions held by other people.
What's sad about all of this is that the publishers missed the opportunity to discuss some of the innovative new media initiatives they're currently working on. Sadder still is the fact that a panel featuring the Marketing Director of Penguin Group made no mention of Penguin UK's brilliant We Tell Stories, a project that ultimately won the SXSW best of show award just a few hours later.
It was suggested by at least one back channel observer that the two sides weren't listening to each other. Not true. The publishers on the panel simply had nothing to say. There was literally nothing for the audience to listen to.
For more of the SXSWi panel check out the Twitter back channel #sxswbp.
