The Penguin Blog

Bookcamped

In the end there was a little less hacking, printing, soldering or coding than I might have hoped for, but the conversations, discussions and presentations that took place at Saturday's Bookcamp confirmed that people think that the time is right for some seriously bookish experimentation.

As Russell Davies blogged last week, the book isn't going away any time soon, but the business models associated with publishing are being vigorously challenged and excitingly (and challengingly for traditional publishers) the means to produce, promote and distribute books are  become available to anyone with an idea or story and access to the internet.

At Bookcamp a mixture of technologists and publishing types (and the odd publishing technologist) considered a good number of these challenges and opportunities. We thought about what publishers and authors might be able to sell if the book ceases to be an artefact. Whether good design can save the book from the online onslaught and whether good design can be built into digital products. We wondered how books can be turned into social objects, retaining the memory of who read them and how these readers had responded to the text.

In a week when it was revealed, to much astonishment, that the amount of time Americans spend reading literature has actually increased in recent years, Bookcampers asked how we might pass on an enthusiasm for reading to children, digital natives growing up with an (over)abundance of entertainment options. And there was a terrific brainstorming session on how an after-school literacy initiative based on the 826 Valencia model might be established on these shores.

All in all, it was a stimulating day which to me demonstrated that the geeks are not out to destroy the book or replace The Great Gatsby with Grand Theft Auto as an paragon of narrative. But equally clear are the challenges that face publishers who traditionally know only how to publish and market traditional printed books in the traditional way. The worlds of reading and books are changing - publishers like Penguin need to keep on learning new tricks while we continue to tweak our old ones.

Thanks to everyone who came and contributed - let's try and continue our conversations and experiments in the comments below or on the wiki.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

PS We're going to try and compile blog posts, photos, reports and other notes from the day into a print-on-demand edition with the working title The Big Bookish Book of Bookcamp - more on this soon.

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Supercharged

It's quite hard to know what to expect from Bookcamp which is now only a few days away. Publishing conferences (this is not one of them) are often quite dry events - 'Supercharging Content Acquisition and Productivity for Publishers', anyone? - and a lot of the real action takes place outside the conference room in nearby corridors, bars and hotel lobbies. The only time I've seen someone demo something that they had actually made at a publishing conference, they got a standing ovation.

At Bookcamp we're hoping to see lots of things people have made or hear them discuss what they might like to make in the future. I'm looking forward to following discussions about how we get children hooked on reading, hearing about authors' fear of the internet and learning why everything on the internet is the opposite of how it is in print! And I'm excited to meet some new people who share an interest in and passion for books and stories and, yes, technology.

But most of all I'm looking forward to being surprised on the day. It's a day of bookish experimentation and we're going to find out what happens when a bunch of smart, creative, enthusiastic people get together to think about how we might save, repair, rethink and rebuild the book for the 21st century. I can't wait.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

PS Please note that because of space restrictions we can't accept any more attendees but we'll report back here soon after the event and perhaps even try our hand at custom, print-on-demand publishing to produce a record of the day.

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Frankfurt's Top Model

Follow the adventures of Penguin operatives over the next few days as they pit their wits against the might of the international publishing and agenting community at the 2007 Frankfurt Book Fair. Day Three and Agent X thinks he is judging America's Top Model...

Frankfurt is a little like the Eurovision Song Contest – publishers dress according to their national fashion, with often disastrous effect. The German men wear shocking lime green blazers, the Dutch leather caps which I last saw in San Francisco in the Castro district back in 1985, the Russians all look like gangsters with loads of bling jewellery, and the Eastern Europeans have trousers which are always two inches too short. In an industry which is so dependent on packaging, I always find it surprising how little interest publishers show in what they wear. A colleague of mine who won't hire editors who are fashion challenged because she thinks they won't be able to commission good covers, would be appalled walking around the fair. That said, I was admiring the suit of an English publisher last night and he said to me, 'oh my tailor in China made it for me'. He wasn't joking - that's the coolest thing I've heard all week.

Our Man at the Bookfair

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Bigger is Better?

Follow the adventures of Penguin operatives over the next few days as they pit their wits against the might of the international publishing and agenting community at the 2007 Frankfurt Book Fair. Day Two and Agent X is pretty pleased with the Penguin stand...

I never feel happier to work for a massive conglomerate like Penguin than when I walk into Hall 8 of the Frankfurt book fair each year. I walk past the tiny booth of some tiddly independent in aisle Z (the Siberia of Frankfurt) and head off to row G right bang in the middle of the hall, and I come across the mighty edifice of the Penguin stand, a feat of engineering which would impress even our very own Jeremy Clarkson. I feel like a medieval peasant in France seeing Chartres cathedral for the first time. The Penguin stand is buzzing with energy. According to the media, editors and publishers only want to work for independents, and everybody who works for conglomerates are corporate drones. What utter bollocks! I love working for a sophisticated, global, super-professional company like Penguin and our Frankfurt stand is the supreme symbol of that.

(Picture by Marc Barker - see more of his work here)

Our Man at the Bookfair

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And so it begins

Follow the adventures of Penguin operatives over the next few days as they pit their wits against the might of the international publishing and agenting community at the 2007 Frankfurt Book Fair. Day One and Agent X runs into trouble at the airport...

One of the great rituals of the Frankfurt Book Fair is that as a publisher one bumps into the agent one least wants to see every 5 seconds. I have only been in Heathrow Terminal 2 for a minute and I have already had to dodge on three occasions an agent I had a massive row with last week. I am presently hiding in the WH Smith Travel magazine section. I am bound now to spend the next 72 hours body swerving the same agent in the aisles of the Fair. Oh Lord, here they come, quick escape to HMV. It's like being a student all over again in the summer term trying to avoid the people you met in your first week at university...

Our Man at the Bookfair

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Interested

9 tips for making a better erotic film. What's so great about knots? The boring truth about getting television programs made. How Grant McCracken didn't relieve himself on the Oprah show. What's a tube? It was a strange and wonderful event on Saturday in Red Lion Square.

This lucky Penguin cleared out his Saturday diary to attend Interesting 2007—a hodge podge assembly of eclectic idea-rakers, albeit slightly random—did not disappoint in the least.  Put on by Russell Davies, a sort of 'god father' of planning, the conference brought together about 300 bloggers, marketers, planners, movers, shakers and tastemakers to present on things they are passionate about.

From about 11am until 6pm, a bright-looking audience was bombarded by 3 min, 10min and 20min presentations on a multitude of topics, each with their own, erm, flaveur. We laughed at an onslaught of clever jokes and kicked ourselves for not having thought of one brilliant and simple idea after another. The deluge to the brain was gluttonous and pleasantly painful.

Back in my early publishing days in Canada, I was first introduced to the little world of keener bloggers and generalist thinkers that after a time all seemed to know one another. I was always stuck by their passion and enthusiasm, and their ability to find the time to post twice a day on more than one blog, all the while holding a day job. Never had I imagined to be sitting in a heavily bunted English hall surrounded by 300 of them and so utterly wishing I was one of them. Perhaps now I am. I did get this t-shirt. The geekery too was another likely surprise, as the event both during and after was flickr'ed, blogged, wiki'd, twittered and vlogged. At last nights count there were 500+ photos already posted on flickr and possibly more blog posts now (177 to be exact).

My paltry contribution to the exchange amounted to about 25 bound proofs and advanced copies I had corralled from various publicity staff. They vanished in a haze of t-shirts and converse. As I watched one presentation after the other, I realised that there are countless projects going on here in Brick Lane that could easily be shared in this forum. Penguins are a passionate bunch, and the work we are doing right now is pretty kick a$$. While I did meet one small independent publisher in my row, I would have liked to have seen a greater presence of publishers, publicists and book marketers engaging this community. Not just to flog books, but to understand that these people are the future. The future of planning, branding, strategy and most of all ideas.

This time I was a witness. Next time I won't be.

Justin Renard, Marketing Officer

(Photo credit Bowbrick, flickr 17 June 2007)

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Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

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The London Book Affair

As the airports of London fill with hungover publishers returning to far-flung destinations, the verdict on this years bookfair seems to be that it was a smooth and pleasant experience for all concerned. Despite the fair being held in its third venue in as many years, once in the midst of the booths (think a sterile souk, with the smell of yessterday's booze replacing the odour of the spice market) things seemed much the same as they ever had. Overcrowded halls, echoey sound and poor air-circulation leading to early afternoon dullness seem to be the norm at these sort of things.

I am not a great aficionado of the trade-fair. I guess being a technological kind of person  I generallybelieve that face-to-face meetings are somewhat overrated - why spend three days in discomfort when the power of wifi + email + skype should mean that business, and pleasure, can be conducted anywhere. (A very quick and unscientific straw poll of colleagues revealed that the majority feel the same - just one professing ardent love for the bookfair and the opportunity to chat, gossip and perhaps do business that it affords).

Those who love bookfairs (and London is second only to Frankfurt in it's size and draw) say that it is a chance for the 'global publishing community' to meet, drink and be merry. But there is aalso a global hierachy of publishers - an incredibly interesting small press from Albania will meet with incredibly interesting small presses from Lithuania, Turkey and Korea. They don't often get to sit at the table with the big boys, and indeed wandering through the Korean, or Turkish or Balkan publisher aisles one doesn't get the impression they see a lot of footfall.

I am not in the rights buying business, so did not get swept up in the pitching and hustling that is the meat and potatos of the bookfair. But I did get given an embossed Moleskine notebook ("The legendary notebook of Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Celine") by a major technology corporation, which seemed a little odd as they are pitching an online book discovery tool. Maybe if they read this, they'll send me a UMPC instead ;-)

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher