The speed of change in the publishing industry seems to be accelerating with each passing year!  I thought this snap taken yesterday at BookCamp Toronto 2012 on the architecturally diverse campus of Ryerson University perfectly captures the notion of speed, and also perhaps, an uphill climb?  Yesterday’s mini conference marked my fourth BookCamp in the past three years (three in Toronto and one in New York this past winter).  Bookcamp is a gathering of publishing industry folks intent on discussing, debating and more importantly, freely sharing expertise and strategies focussed largely on the transition from print to digital.

My educational publishing industry colleague Kelly Ronan and I attended yesterday’s BookCamp and took some time after the conference to discuss just how much change has occurred in our industry since our first BookCamp in 2010.  Kelly noted that in fact our industry has grown up a lot in the past two years as evidenced by the large number of folks not only asking important questions around digital publishing, but even larger numbers providing answers and solutions based on the level of innovation occurring at publishing houses big and small across the country. A pioneering spirit coupled by a good dose of “if we don’t try this, we might not survive” has spurred on the growth of the e-Book format, so much so in fact, that one topic at this past winter’s BookCamp New York was “can we still call this “thing” a “book?” You may smile at some of the crowd-sourced alternate names for a book that our group came up with on that day:  readies, words, newbks, caxtons, infob, dex, bix, knowie, singles, rootex, slate, tablet, pagey, screens, eyebooks, and my favourite, eyedeas.  This evolution of “the book” format and function does make one wonder if the OED needs to revise it’s definition of the book (see my post title above)?

When I looked back on my blog posts that followed each BookCamp, not unlike Kelly, I too saw a pattern and a maturation in our industry challenges and opportunities around digital publishing. My first post (found here) highlighted many of the early production questions related to developing e-books. My second and third BookCamp posts (found here, and here) revealed an underlying nervousness as sessions turned from the basic production challenges of developing e-books to pricing and business models and in fact the survival of the industry as print sales decreased in 2011. This year, we have witnessed the growth of e-book sales (tied tightly to the proliferation of e-readers and tablets) and so our topics yesterday included the “e-fficacy” of on-line book reviews, “e-visibility” of e-books, and the “e-tangibles” required to promote e-books in physical stores, just to name a few.

Don’t get me wrong. This is still a challenging time in the publishing industry. Print sales continue to decline, and although e-book sales are increasing, they are not replacing the lost revenue in print sales. Yet, in the face of adversity, all publishing houses are finding new ways to reach our “book”-loving audiences with new stories in new formats to engage the senses, the mind and the heart. It is this pioneering, brave spirit that keeps me inspired each day and grateful for the chance to contribute to our story, no matter which format it takes.