Bookseller and Web 2 , to be continued

This is not supposed to be a negative post about the Bookseller. I find the daily email is just about perfect as a guide to what is going on, including all things digital. But us bloggers make a contribution as well. such as suggesting to proper journalists that it may not matter if there is no reply to an email. It is surprising what you can find on a blog and usually ok to copy it out.

The O'Reilley TOC blog has a post about "The Good and (and some Bad) of TOC Frankfurt Coverage" that comments on a Bookseller report that included a claim that trade publishere were under-represented at the TOC Frankfurt event and that the agenda was too friendly for pirates and software fans.

Sara Lloyd, digital director of Pan Macmillan, was quoted by the Bookseller as saying "The O'Reilly perspective is quite slanted by the content and market that they serve, and that perspective shines through in their choice of speaker and subject matter. There needs to be a greater understanding of what the differences are between a computer software manual and a fiction bestseller. I'd like to see more of a consumer publishing perspective."

It may be worth mentioning that Cory Doctorow is not just a techie but also a writer of science fiction. His blog at craphound.com reveals that there is a Norwegian PDF of Little Brother for free download from Samlaget. Apparently they bought the rights after downloading a free copy in English.

O'Reilley also organise events about "Web 2" on the west coast. "Tools Of Change" seems like an East Coast version for people with more of a print background. So there could be more wierd stuff to follow.

There are signs of a bit of a gap at the moment. The Bookseller report claims that TOC fail to answer emails and the TOC blog claims that complaints about the TOC agenda are out of proportion. But some dialogue continues. Comments on the TOC blog include information from Sara Lloyd that Pan MacMillan have yet to experience larger sales on mobile than in print as she claims is the case for some O'Reilley titles. Philip Jones states that "The Bookseller has no issue with TOC or its agenda, we are simply responding to publisher concern about what was widely regarded as the set-piece digital conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair."

Publishers may have concerns about the issues involved and the speed of change rather than TOC as such. A survey ahead of Frankfurt in the printed version of the Bookseller suggested many people expect a "turning point" to digital in 2018. My impression is that #TOCFrankfurt has changed the agenda already.

Meanwhile I cannot find much online about #weiss_raum or "White Space". Anybody near Frankfurt please have a look and write it up. The nature of book production is changing, enough to keep this post on topic for this blog.