Connecting with our community

I've been attending BEA, the annual book convention, for more years than I care to admit -- I remember when it was the ABA, recall the year it rained through all the outdoor parties in Miami, and even recollect the year that Oprah announced her own book, a deal she famously pulled out of before turning around to be the biggest advocate for reading and books the country has ever seen.

It never gets old to me, spending time with tens of thousands of people who passionately love books -- it's like getting a snapshot of the many talented hands it takes to turn a great author's idea into an equally terrific book.

Dennis, Sara, Lew and I holed up miles from the convention center at the boutique Ambrose Hotel in Santa Monica, a place we highly recommend if you're heading west and have any concerns about your environmental impact -- a very green hotel.

Our convention highlights and a few photos:
**World Cafe in Santa Monica where we celebrated with our friends from 800-CEO-READ (their book is coming out from Portfolio in early 2009).

**We all are forced to live vicariously through Sara, who wrangled an invite to the exclusive book party at Prince's house. We were jealous, but I helped out on wardrobe and at least my dress got to go to the Purple One's backyard and party until the wee hours of the morning.

**Lew scored Rick Riordan's autograph for her son Cody and tells us it was a huge thrill to meet the man "who inspired my son not only to read, but to become an avid reader."

**Barbara waited 30 minutes to say hello to Ethan Canin who was signing his new book America, America. She worked on Blue River with him in 1991 and reports he's still the "nicest and most talented novelist I've ever had the chance to work with."


Our goodie bags -- Sara made her famous toffee and marshmallows and my son posed for our promotional photo along with stacks of our great books.


Dinner at the Wilshire Restaurant with our friends from Gallup.


Dennis and Gallup editor Piotr Juszkiewicz with their selected reading material picked up on the convention floor.



We share a moment of levity before boarding our planes back home -- to the east coast and the heart of Texas.

Good show, good memories, always a great time.

Kindle boasts success; Reader gets my Nod

Jeff Bezos is welcoming customers to the homepage today of Amazon today with news that the Kindle is back in stock. His cover note (.pdf) on the online seller's site links not only to the company's annual letter to shareholders, which is all about the electronic reader, but also boasts of the product's more than 2,000 reviews to date.

Apparently, the Kindle is living up to its hype - at least in terms of sales.

As I reported earlier this month, I finally caved to the groaning weight of manuscript pages and traded paper for a Sony Reader. And after a couple of weeks, I would say I qualify as a convert, but not an evangelist, for the whole idea of digital book.

Advantages first -- it's light, easy to use, and quick to download Word documents and PDFs. While I have yet to crack the manual (reading directions is not my strong suit), it is straightforward enough to figure out how to pop up the font size, browse through a selection of downloaded files and bookmark a page. I am currently carrying five books around with me and I love the ease of dropping one, slim, leather-bound gadget into my bag. The cover is a nice touch, too, by the way. Earlier versions of the Reader felt more like a PDA, or a Blackberry on steroids. For the book lover, it's nice to open an actual cover. For the multi-tasker, it's great to have more than one option of reading material when you are stuck at the DMV or waiting for a meeting to start.

The biggest downside for me is still the screen -- harder to read than a computer. Another glitch happens almost every time you hit the "next page" button. It flips quickly enough, but often repeats the first sentence or two of the previous page on top of the new page, something that can grow annoying rapidly. I have yet to figure out how to alter the screen's brightness (yes, I realize that the manual must cover this but I have not gotten that far).

I have started carrying the Reader with me wherever I am and conducting my own market research -- looking either for validation that it is the next iPod or evidence that the paper book will never cease to exist. From bankers to bloggers, the initial reaction is always interest. The more technically inclined tinker with it a bit and scan a page or two; the less digital tend to examine the packaging. The overall response -- mostly positive, but no one seems inclined to rush out and buy one.

All the opinions together are probably best summed up by 800-CEO-Read's Todd Sattersten who was in Austin last week and had a few minutes to fiddle with the Reader over breakfast and discussion of his just completed Portfolio book, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. "They just aren't there with it yet," says Todd, whose office holds both an earlier version of the Reader and a Kindle.

As for me, I'm a convert for my work reading, but not sure I will ever feel the urge to download War and Peace. The skeptics say I'll change my tune on an overseas flight. But anyone who has been stranded without a power cord knows, the pages of a book never need a battery.

Go Digital or Die

We in the publishing world have come a long way in recent weeks in putting real clout and actual staff behind our opinion that the importance of digital media in marketing a book is growing fast and, in fact, has probably hit what Malcolm Gladwell so elegantly dubbed "the tipping point." If digital media isn't the most important driver of getting public attention for a book, it is running a close second as information is now instant, paperless, visual and ever-present.

Two public relations firms, including this one, and a major publisher have recently announced plans to assign staff to newly created positions that specifically address the opportunities of Web 2.0, the blogging world and all things related to the Internet. While proud of us all, it's not hard for me to conjure an image of the geniuses at the Apple store, the Generation Y staffers at Google headquarters and probably most of our children saying, "What took you so long?"

Sara Schneider in our New York office has moved up to Associate Director and we officially redefined her duties to include creating a web-based strategy for every book the agency represents. We don't consider this a value-add for our clients, but rather a must-have for every project hoping to get widespread public attention.

In fact, we'd already dipped a toe in the digital water by starting this blog in the fall. Its purpose, in part, was to give all of us a chance to experience first-hand how to write, position and create traffic for a blog. I'm certain our first readers were only those whose paycheck I signed. But then marketing guru John Moore mentioned our blog in his blog, Brand Autopsy, and traffic jumped. We attended an event hosted by 800 CEO Read in December and a dozen bloggers there gave us shout outs, and we were on our way. The rules are being written and we, like our colleagues, want to be on the front line in learning them all and embracing the opportunities they create.

This week Simon & Schuster appointed Elinor Hirschorn to the newly created role of Chief Digital Officer, in a move it said "reflected the growing importance of digital publishing to traditional publishers." And in January David Hahn at Planned Television Arts was promoted to Managing Director will as part of his new duties will head a digital division, PTAInteractive.

Just as academics learned to "publish or perish" to ensure their success, we in the publishing world must now embrace digital or risk losing our relevance not only to new readers, but those among us determined to ride the wave of the information age.