Podiobooker
News from the Staff of Podiobooks.com

The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference was held in NYC last week, and Podiobooks.com had no official representation. I have a strong suspicion that won’t be the case next year. These people seem to speak our language.

I experience the conference in another way: via the power of Twitter. I have to tell you, it was an interesting experience trying to drink from that fire hose. It seemed like hundreds of people in attendance were tweeting just about everything that happened. Nothing like texting to a few thousand of your closest friends when someone said something interesting. Which happened ever, oh… 3.78 seconds.

Here’s what I learned from watching the tweets:

• DRM is dagnasty evil, and no one but DRM-makers want it.
  It’s OK if you disagree with me on this point. Absolutes are difficult to come by in today’s world. But the overwhelming majority of what I saw on Twitter sides with me. With all this animosity building — and with the music industry running away from the, ahem… technology — I fully expect DRM to be dropped by most audiobook producers by the end of 2010. If it takes that long. It’s a simple cost equation.

• The word book means something different than it used to.
  I think Cory Doctorow summed it up best in a tweet, but I’ll take a stab at it, too. The audience wants to consume your content in a format they find desirable. You have to be more than an author or a publisher these days, you have to be a content provider. And if you do not provide your content in a way your audience wants to experience it, then they may convert it themselves. More likely — they’ll ignore you and move on to someone who will. Yes, you’ll have to learn new things. But think of the fun you’ll have doing so!

• Innovation isn’t waiting on anybody.
  Readers and listeners are changing the rules to better fit their needs. Upstart publishing companies have a totally different view of “the marketplace” than we’ve seen before. Software giants have their own perspective. Wishing these things weren’t true is invalid thinking. Longing for a return to the good old days is delusionary. Changes won’t happen overnight, but given enough overnights, you may wake up outdated in a few short tomorrow.

I’d love to know if any of our listeners or authors (hi Teel!) attended. If so, please share your thoughts in the comments below. And I’ll see you there next year.

This entry was posted by Evo on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 6:27 am and is filed under Industry news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.