Yesterday, I attended Book Summit, the annual publishing conference put on by Humber College and Harbourfront Centre. One of the most interesting thing about this conference was the attendees. There’s a lot of overlap, but BookNet Tech Forum attracts production and digital types, BookCamp attracts the innovators and interns and Book Summit pulls in a lot of marketing and publicity types. These different audiences are good, because, let’s face it, a lot of these conferences talk about the same stuff. Heck, Michael Tamblyn of Kobo actually spoke at all three.

Regardless of the problems with the publishing conference industry, the fact these messages are reaching different audiences each time is a good thing. I’ve been to several, and still come away with new contacts, new ideas and new perspectives.

Here’s the three big themes of yesterday:

One-way communication is dead.
The internet, television, radio: it’s no longer experts speaking on topics, then listeners chatting about said topics to their friends. Users are becoming producers and can bring valuable perspectives to the table. Media outlets, publishers, writers–everyone needs to recognize this and restructure their content and message so it’s conducive to two-way communication. There will always be space for long-form originally researched content produced by authoritative voices. This is not going away. What is changing is how people consume, react to, and participate in this content. MTV’s Twitter Tracker is a (very lame) start, but the potential to create communities around whatever you make or talk about–books, news, movies, flipcams–is boundless.

Publishing is, and always will be, about connecting the writer to the reader.
News flash: publishing is not about making books. It’s about connecting readers with content and with writers who produce this content. That used to be about editing a book, printing it, sending out review copies and waiting for readers to see the ad, read the review, then head to their local bookstore to buy it. That model is becoming obsolete. Readers and writers have endless ways to connect, whether it’s through book blogs, the author’s own website, the author’s podcast, whatever. The format of the content does not matter. What matters is this connection and publishers play a role in curating and facilitating this.

“I want what I want when I want it.” If you can’t service that, you’re dead.
Being a consumer is about instant gratification. Now when you want a song, a movie or a book right that second, whether you spotted someone on the subway reading it, or a friend mentioned it to you at a party, you can get it. If you can’t get it right that second, the likelihood of you purchasing that ever is gone. POD books, downloadable ebooks: all these options will only increase sales. If you’re not offering it and someone else is. That consumer is more likely to go “well, I really wanted Meg Cabot’s vampire book, but that’s not available. I guess Stephenie Meyer’s new novella will do,” and you lost a sale.

As much as I learned, as with every conference, there’s room for improvement. Here’s three suggestions for next year’s organizers:

Focus on the Canadian.
David Pogue, the tech columnist for The New York Times, was a clever and lively keynote. However, he didn’t really tailor his presentation for the audience at hand, mentioning Hulu, Neflix, AT&T, and several gadgets that aren’t available (or aren’t available yet) in Canada. Chris Morrow and his store Northshire Books were an excellent example of a thriving contemporary book store, but he’s from Vermont. Wouldn’t having Mark Lefebvre from Titles at McMaster and Joanne Saul from Type Books–two book stores doing very different things, but are embracing change and community–be more relevant to the audience? They could’ve had an amazing three-way panel. Canadian publishing has it’s own unique sets of challenges and opportunities and that’s something to be explored at conferences like this.

Change up the structure of the Information Sessions.
One-way conversation, with a panelist talking for 20 minutes followed by another panelist, is not a great format. The Books and Media information session had the CBC talking about their website (which I’m sure everyone in the room had already seen) and Toronto Star‘s Vit Wagner talking about why he doesn’t do social media. Both these viewpoints are very popular and both need to be included in the conversation. However, the discussion would’ve been pushed so much further had the CBC and Vit spoke to each other. Additionally, I would’ve loved it if someone from a non-traditional media outlet (Maud Newton, Sarah Weinman and George Murray all come to mind) was there to talk about the changing role of book coverage. Keep the panelists’ presentations to 10 minutes each and leave 20 minutes at the end for discussion. It’ll get the blood flowing and the brain working.

Make the Workshops more hands-on.
I attended David Pogue’s gadget workshop and I thought that this meant him handing around super cool gadgets and discussing what publishing can learn from these toys. He did demonstrate a lot of awesome apps and gadgets, but next year I want to get down and dirty and learn some XML work flow or see some social media newbies set up Twitter accounts and explore who is doing awesome stuff online and what they can learn from that.

Overall, it was a productive day. The snacks were amazing, the discussions were thoughtful and I had a good time. I’m more excited, however, about seeing these thoughts become actions.

For more Book Summit reading, check out Mark Lefebvre’s thoughtful post, Top 10 Takeaways From Book Summit.