No chance to live blog at the BEA today. Too many people to meet and chat with, too much to scope out – and the Javits Center doesn’t have wireless. Things look better for tomorrow. HarperCollins is offering free wireless, which I hope to avail myself of.
In the meantime Melville Goodwin, commenting on my previous post, posed a question that does seem to be getting some buzz: How are commercial publishers reacting to the explosion of self-publishing?
As it happens, last night I talked about just that with Mike Shatzkin, CEO of TheIdeaLogical Company, a publishing consulting firm. Mike thinks the self-publishing companies can be for traditional commercial publishers what farm teams are for sports franchises (we were at a Mets game). The problem is coming up with an effective filtering system that will identify the genuine prospects as quickly as possible. He has an idea similar to one I had already talked about with some people at The Inquirer (but I'll leave it at that, because it’s such a good idea, I don’t want it to get around just yet. Still open to other ideas, though.
My day is not over. I have another appointment. Maybe I can get back here later and give some idea of what exactly BEA is like.
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