Friday, June 03, 2005

Not live yet at the BEA...

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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