Digital Book World: From the Conference to the Sentence

Sara Lloyd’s talk at Frankfurt “Revisiting a Publishing Manifesto—What Does the Future Look Like for Publishers?” generated a lot of buzz on Twitter . . . so we thought we’d introduce you to a new conference.

The Conference

The first ever Digital Book World, to be held January 26 and 27, 2010, in New York, is “is designed specifically to help consumer book publishers and their trading partners assess the challenges and opportunities presented by the digital age.” According to Publishers Weekly, a number of speakers and panels have been confirmed—including sessions on Evolving the Business Model and Ebooks: Opportunity or Threat?—and you can register now.

In the “Books Plus in the 21st Century” session, Cookstr, Fourth Story Media, and author Alison Norrington will examine how new revenue streams can be created by combining print and web content. Tor.com will take on how social media builds communities, and BookSquare will tackle the sensitive subject of book pricing. Some additional panels ASF finds intriguing:

• The Changing Agent-Author Relationship: How It Will Affect the Business Model
• Understanding Brand Basics: What Makes Brands Work or Fail, and Why Publishers Should Care
• The New Farm System: Scouting Blogs and Self-Publishers for Commercial Books
• Listen to Your Young People: When Entry-Levels Know More than Managers
• Video Is a Requirement: Mastering a New Skill and How to Apply It

Speaking of that last panel. . .

The Sentence

ASF hopes the conference will feature crazy-cool byproducts of marriages between thought and multimedia, like Electric Literature‘s “Single Sentence Animations”—which this month shows a bloody good 33-second Jonathan Ashley animation of a single sentence of Michael Cunningham from Olympia, a novel in progress. Last issue featured the haunting interpretation by Luca Dipierro of Lydia Millet’s “Sir Henry.” See them both here.