I spent today attending Google Unbound at the New York Public Library.  Until today I was not covering the Google Print project that closely, but I know John Battelle and others were looking at Google Print very closely.   It's fair to say that major influencers in the publishing industry were present at today's "packed" conference room at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue.

I'm going to spend the next two or three posts on Google Unbound, presenting my notes and adding my thoughts in context to the sessions I listened to.

Here's what this post will cover (see below):

 

Where:	Celeste Bartos Forum New York Public Library Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street New York, NY 10018 *Please use 42nd Street Entrance
Agenda:	8:00 Registration and Breakfast 9:00 Welcome: Jim Gerber, Content Partnerships Director, Google 9:30 State of the Industry: David Worlock, Chairman, Electronic Publishing Services Ltd (EPS) Angela D'Agostino, Vice President of Business Development & Marketing, Bowker

I got there just after 9AM (I had problems getting out of bed after last night's dinner meeting with Gary Angel at The Modern), I  should have gone to bed earlier but had to do my blogging (blogging addict is more like it). OK, here goes:

Angela D'Agostino, who's worked for Bowker for at least 16 years (if I recall correctly) spoke first and mentioned that there's 3 times more publishers today than in 1995. Part of the reason for changes, she thinks, is the aging baby boomer demographic (which Angela is also part of).

However, comparing the amount of books sales in the online channel, in 1998 it was 2 percent while in 2005 it was 12 percent! 

Comment: This statistic is misleading; Angela says there's three times more overall activity in the online sales channel for books - so there's three times more books (or sales being made) now then 1998 plus of those sales, there's now 6 times more books sales online than before - so the real numbers of sales online are much, much higher - I wish she pointed that out).

Overall, there was 4 billion in sales for books in 1998 and it's estimated to be 11 billion by 2011 (I'm not sure if this refers to all books or a segment of book sales activity). Online channel is growing fast.

Bowker defines Web shoppers (I think these numbers come from Nielsen Book Scan) as people who have purchased online in the last 3 months and an Active web shoppers as someone who spent more than 500 dollars online in the last 3 months.  It's been found that Active web shoppers are more likely to purchase offline as well, and with more frequency.

Demographics…publishers did not want to get involved with demographics in 2005 when Angela initially approached them. Aggregating more online buying behavior data and Bowker will be launching an online demographic, buying behaviour product later this year.

Online is growing double digit while offline sales are growing in the
single digits. Student buying behavior, has tripled with 9 billion being spent online buying books and  1.6 billion of that money being spent on student textbooks.

In 2015 printed books sales and online book sales and will meet, it's projected (spending on both will be about the same).  Therefore, the online sales channel is viewed by Bowker as being very, very important.

That was it for Angela D'Agostino, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Bowker.  Next, David Worlock, Chairman of Electronic Publishing Services spoke (see below):

Users is most important.  We feel Print and online books will exist together. Evolutionary trend well underway but books are books and lets not try to call books something something it is not by putting a "e" in front of everything (ir..e-books, emarketing..e-everything)…if your concept is old, putting an e in front of it will not help you.

Print, print on demand and interactive entertainment are the 3 main channels, as defined by David Worlock, while search, community and work flow are common to all 3.

The next stage is the age of the effective publisher; Publishers have played the impresarios but can they still be? With Digital change, education is far behind both in England and is even worse in the United States. Are we are going to build a world of lower margins and higher profit?

And, are people's participation in second life reflecting their need for
narrative…and if so, is it in our future involve having the author be in the center of their publishing environment? Publishers are grappling with the chucking of content.  Some of it is a database challenge..do I know if an asset can be used?

In fact, the Role of the editor has changed; the editor used to decide if material should be printed and now it involves online search, going back and tagging past publishing efforts which can be very difficult and expensive to do.

Note, I think web analytics can solve the problem just posed of the
ideal chunk size.  At this point, the session was over and a question about the K12 market being  resistant as it relates to the network digital environment.

Ok, so I got the sense that many publishers are not quite prepared for the full implications of the changes taking place just now - may have no real strategy for making their content available,  in a web 2.0 way, and it may be they will have to figure this out and then go back a tag a lot of public content to take advantage of how people search and use information today and the future.