TOC New York 2012 schedule
Monday 13th February 2012
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Digital Typography for e-Reading
by Vladimir Levantovsky and Steve Matteson
Digital typography overview for designers and others interested in the do’s and don’ts, latest developments, and forecasts in digital typography for screen-based reading.
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Kindle eBooks from ePub: Automated or Manual
ePub files can be beautifully designed, especially on devices like the iPad, but if you send that beautiful ePub to Amazon or through KindleGen for auto-conversion into the Kindle format you risk losing all of your hard work. This session will cover two ways of approaching Kindle eBook creation.
First, we will talk about best practices you can use when creating your ePub files that will allow them to auto-convert to the Kindle format through KindleGen with ease. This is not as easy as it might sound, since there are still some major differences between the two formats. We will talk about both basic and complex formatting, with ideas on making the content look good both in your ePub and in the auto-converted Kindle file.
Second, we will walk you through the process of creating a native Kindle file based on your ePub source. This is helpful when you do plan to upload a Kindle file directly to Amazon, and especially when you have complex formatting like poetry, sidebars, tables, etc. The Kindle format has some unique tricks and special formatting capabilities for complex titles that you just can’t do in a single-source ePub workflow. You will learn all of those tricks, and become an expert Kindle eBook creator.
This workshop is geared toward designers and developers who are working on eBooks regularly, and a foundational knowledge of the ePub format and its files is recommended. Managers and other non-techies are also welcome, and the information presented should be helpful for anyone who is tasked with developing in-house eBook workflows.
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InDesign to EPUB: The Basics and Beyond
How do you get from a print-ready InDesign layout to a beautiful and fast-loading EPUB without tearing your hair out? Join InDesign and eBook guru Anne-Marie “HerGeekness” Concepcion — whose hair is still fully intact — for her half-day intensive session and find out!
Newbies will get a thorough understanding of the process and how to avoid the pitfalls. Experienced EPUB pros will learn new techniques, fixes, and free scripts, and how to use InDesign features to help create enhanced EPUBs. All attendees will get a handout of the main points of the presentation and all the URLs to scripts, plug-ins, and other resources.
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Down & Dirty EPUB 3.0: Building an EPUB 3.0 From Start to Finish
by Amanda Gomm and Tom McCluskey
First, we will begin with a rudimentary EPUB 2.0 document and examine the specific files to bring everyone onto the same page and ensure we are all using the same language. This will be a trip down memory lane for some and an introduction to EPUB structure for others. It will include a brief overview of Mimetype files, Meta-inf, and OEBPS. Beginners should feel welcome, old hands should feel nostalgia.
Second, we will turn our simple EPUB 2.0 document into an EPUB3 on the most basic level. We will introduce the package document and how the mechanics of the two files differ.
Third, we will introduce new features that were not possible with the old structure. Some of these are multimedia, font control, text-to-speech functionality, aural renditions, media overlays, and scripting. We will introduce them individually and answer questions as they arise to ensure everyone understands how they work, what they can do, and what they imply for the ebook.
Fourth, we will build a complicated EPUB3 together that takes advantage of all of these new functions. Attendees who bring laptops will be given the files and programs needed to follow along or try on their own at home.
Finally, we will open the floor to questions and discussion.
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Copyright for Startups
by Edward Colleran and Skott Klebe
Copyright was originally designed when type was still made out of lead. What do we need to know in today’s era of ebooks, multimedia, apps, and the cloud? After an overview of copyright concepts, we will focus on understanding how copyright applies to the issues of new media and new content delivery methods. We will talk about Creative Commons and noncommercial use, compare the borderless internet with the territoriality of copyright, and review some of the key cases that have shaped the application of copyright in the digital age.
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Hippo In Ballet Shoes, Or Greyhound On The Track? Applying Agile Methodologies To Traditional Publishing
For those who work on the digital and software development side of publishing, agile methodologies such as SCRUM and Lean Development may be familiar, but what would happen if we took these processes out of the technical department and applied them to mainstream publishing’s more vertical workflows? This session will introduce key principals of agile methodology, and then examine the potential benefits of using these methodologies to transform everything from editorial and marketing, to team-building, reporting, product creation cycles, and new product innovation. These kinds of workflows have the potential to flatten hierarchies, speed up production, increase collaboration, reduce inefficiency, and retool our industry for the 21st century. The question is, are we ready for that? No seriously, are we ready?
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Using WordPress for Digital Workflows and More
by Kirk Biglione and Hugh McGuire
As digital becomes more central to a book publishers life, the tools must change to keep pace. In this session we look at WordPress as a lightweight digital swiss army knife, a powerful and flexible platform that can be adapted to many publishing needs. We’ll look at using WordPress-based systems for ecommerce, marketing, catalogs and discovery and more. Participants will aslo have a hands-on demo of PressBooks (built on WordPress), a digital book production tool that participants can use to generate an epub and typeset PDFs.
Bring a laptop, participants will make an epub and a typeset PDF during the session.
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Optimizing Your Web Site for Discovery: A Workshop
Introduction – 2 minutes Overview of Discovery Landscape – 8 mins
Search Engines
Blogs
Social Networks
EmailOptimizing for Search Engines using your CMS – 20 mins
On-Site SEO vs Off-Site SEO
Explanation of HTML’s information hierarchy and why it matters
Content Hierarchy within a page (Title, Headers, links, text, etc.)
Internal LinkingOptimizing for the Blogosphere (active content marketing) – 20 mins
The “Content Vacuum”
Why your original, edited, expert content is valuable
Timing your content release
Targeting your content release
Making your content easily repostable or portableOptimizing for Social Networks (passive content marketing) – 20 mins
Value is shared, not commercials
Targeting your audience (quality over quantity)
Open Graph
Interactions which reach the 2nd-level of followersOptimizing Email Campaigns – 20 mins
Newsletters: Paper vs Digital
The new goal of email marketing
The tools (ConstantContact, MailChimp, Bronto, etc.)
The content (time-saving tips: rss emails, pre-written blog
The schedule -
Building Local & Global Communities around Your Brand, Business, and Properties
by Bethanne Patrick, Sam Missingham, Julia von dem Knesebeck and guinevere de la mare
This workshop is for publishers and other content creators concerned with expanding their customer base. Community building experts Sam Missingham (the Bookseller), Julia von dem Knesebeck (Bilandia), Guinevere de la Mare (Chronicle Books), and Bethanne Patrick (aka The BookMaven) will share strategies and tactics for building a multi-platform, integrated social media marketing program that plays on the strengths of all the players in the publishing ecosystem: author/publisher/traditional media/ AND the bookbuying (bookreading) consumer themselves – in reaching out and building relationships AND sales.
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HTML5 for Publishers
HTML5 is revolutionizing the Web, and now it’s coming to your ebook reader! In this workshop, I give an overview of three areas of HTML5 that offer great promise to ebook publishers looking to expand beyond traditional text-and-graphic narratives: HTML5 Canvas, Geolocation, and Audio/Video. After a brief tutorial of the HTML markup and JavaScript code used to implement these features, I will transition into some exercises that put HTML5 in action.
For each topic area, I also discuss the current status of HTML5 compatibility with major EPUB reader platforms (for example, iBooks, Nook Color, Adobe Digital Editions).
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Minimum Viable (Publishing) Product
The world of startups has much to teach book publishing. The relationship of venture capital and entrepreneur closely resembles that of publisher and author. The dynamics of black swans and long tails appear in both markets. Addressing a felt need in a way that improves people’s lives creates success for both startup and book.
In recent years, a set of new ideas about product development have changed how startups go to market. Minimum viable product is one of those concepts that has gone from buzzword to vocabulary in Silicon Valley. This insight changes when customers become involved, time to market, how much risk is created.
This workshop will answer the following questions:
What is a minimum viable product?
What benefits do we gain from this approach to product development?
Are their already examples of this within book publishing?
What happens when periodical publishing collides with book publishing?
What are three ways book publishers can start using the MVP concept tomorrow? -
UX Meets eBook: Usability Professionals Improve The Digital Reading Experience
by Louis Rosenfeld, Victor Lombardi, Whitney Quesenbery and Anne Kostick
A gathering of experts in UX and closely related fields will tackle both the well known and the hidden obstacles to true reader engagement on digital platforms. In preparation for the panel, we’ll assign and address UX issues in e-books. Each panelist will look at a different aspect, present his critique with plenty of visuals, and offer an idea for improvement.
The panel will include some unusual activities. Among them:
Use the audience as an on-the-spot test group to illustrate both how to engage in and how to evaluate user research data;
Demonstrate how game playing spurs new thinking and results;
Surface some famous studies of usability (or dumb decisions) as a brain kick-start;
Show short videos or slides of usability design testing; In other words, engage the whole room in solving UX problems in the digital-reading space, and help spark their own ideas about creating better e-books.
Although it may come to rest in a design track, I don’t see this as a design seminar. It’s really a mental-model elevator, in what has long been a blind spot in book publishing.Industry producers both large and small recognize the importance of a good digital reading experience in attracting and retaining customers. Traditional publishers who have gone into online retailing can appreciate the business importance of customer retention, and the user experience directly influences customer retention. Now, possibly for the first time, publishers have the opportunity to market a good experience, along with a great story, or important information. UX research and design is critical to that experience.
Furthermore, book publishers resist ceding control of the reader’s experience to the device manufacturers; the more they learn about UX design the more control they can retain. And there is so much more to say, so much more work to be done in this area.
This session will be a valuable step for publishing people as they move forward with digital:
They will get a look at the mental workings of UX professionals as they focus on e-books, and in a singular presentation.
They’ll see how in the still-new frontier of digital reading the requirements of book readers bump up against the limitations of technology, and how the discipline of UX can develop workarounds or build overpasses.
They’ll have some “good-better-best” takeaways in the form of printed materials that we’ll develop for the conference.
This session offers a real application of UX expertise to the book industry—something that was never really necessary before the advent of digital—and that’s new and valuable. -
How to Shoot, Edit, and Embed Video on Your Website or eBook
by Brian Felsen
This panel will teach you everything you need to get started with video, so you can create a better ebook experience, engage with your fans on the Internet, and expand your reader base. Brian Felsen will go through recommended equipment purchase, basics of lighting, setup, editing, uploading, and metadata. Attendees will shoot a short video and walk through the process together.
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The Changing World of Digital Rights & Publishing Agreements
by Dana Newman
Join Dana Newman as she discusses the changing world of digital rights and publishing agreements. Authors, agents, and publishers alike will appreciate this workshops which promises to offer a clearer understanding of the issues, with topics to be addressed including:
New business models for the licensing of rights
Advances and royalties
Digital/new media rights
Options
Permissions
The changing definition of “out-of-print”
Retained rights/reversion of rights
Changes/interpretations of “non-compete” clauses -
Breaking The Page: Content Design for An Infinite Canvas
by Peter Meyers
Some see the iPad and think: it’s perfect for enhancing a book. This workshop is for anyone ready to think bigger. It’s time to enlist the touchscreen as more than just a container for a souped-up stack of pages. The digital display can serve as viewport onto a canvas that extends without limit—not just up, down, left, and right, but also as a creative space offering new kinds of elastic properties: accordion-like documents that house different sized versions of themselves; geometrical shapes across which viewers explore non-linear compositions; even static backgrounds upon which content continuously changes. The challenge lies in tailor-making compositions for these new contours. When you can do things like pinch and spread, refresh content, and pan across a canvas, what kinds of subject matter is best suited for these interactions?
I’ll lead workshop attendees on a tour through a half-dozen very specific examples of born-digital, tablet-friendy designs. Each will illustrate in different ways how ePub3, web-based, and app productions can do more than simply replicate, or merely enhance, a print book. I’ll also give a quick look at how to design this stuff so that, leaving the room, people will feel equipped to go out and plan their own creations. Don’t come to this session if you want yet another look at how Peter Rabbit can be repurposed. The future of publishing lies in making content that debuts on the touchscreen.
Tuesday 14th February 2012
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Welcome & Annoucements
by Kat Meyer and Joe Wikert
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Keynote by LeVar Burton
by LeVar Burton
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Keynote by Alan Jacobs and Timothy Carmody
by Alan Jacobs and Tim Carmody
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Keynote by Joe Karaganis
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The Death of the Page, the Dawn of Digital
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Case Study: A Collaborative Approach To Digital Content Distribution
by Marcus Woodburn, Martin Klopstock and Rodney Elder
Real life case study of modern publisher Kogan Page, and how they have used complimentary third-party services of Ingram Content Group and VirtuSales to effectively publish, promote and sell books. In this session, hear from industry leaders about the collaborative and innovative approach that has enabled Kogan Page to take a book from concept to consumer, including production management, metadata management and e-book distribution to a comprehensive global market.
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The Changing Face of Retail Bookselling
by Philip Downer
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You've Decided The Cloud Is Right For Your Organization. Now The Hard Part.
For many organizations, the analysis to determine whether there are opportunities in utilizing both private and public cloud has been satisfied. But for most, the hard work begins after the decision has been made. The toughest activities ahead includes prioritizing the migration, managing change, retooling, and security. In this session, Dr. Jonathan Reichental will summarize some best practices in managing the execution of your cloud strategy.
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Indexing in eBooks and eContent - Adding Value
by Jan Wright
Search is a complex process, but the Search function in eReaders is still fairly primitive. Studies of readers performing research show that the goal can change several times as the reader thinks through their question. It may be a quick search for an idea they know is in a book. Or it can be multi-faceted process where the reader learns more, broadens their interest, decides to use a different term instead, finds out new information or terms to try, or narrows to focus on a facet. We don’t know what mode a reader is in when they open an eBook, but students who are confined to just an eBook often wind up borrowing or buying the print version.
Indexes can provide the reader with pre-analysis of a text, but they are not being implemented well (or at all) in eBooks and eContent. This means the reader loses a navigation tool that could help at several stages of research, and the eBook loses potentially-useful semantic metadata that could be implemented and used in coming versions of ePub and more powerful readers. In this session, we’ll review what happens in the process of searching, and three methods of offering readers additional tools to help them navigate content and aboutness. A prototype of Search + Index will be described, and we will be asking for feedback about how it could be implemented, improved, or adopted.
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What Should I Read? A Brief History of Recommendations
by Mark Johnson
What to read next is an age old question. From library catalogs to best seller lists to search engines to modern recommendation systems, this session will take you through a tour of the history of recommendations with a sharp focus on the past 20 years: why did recommendation systems pop up now and what has changed in the past few years.
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Changing the Face of Open Commerce Identity in Publishing
In the publishing world, the need for a powerful and intelligent identity system is clear – incorporating easy commerce methods directly into the real identity of their user base can provide easy registration, checkout and user authentication.
The problem is that current open identity systems are not commerce based, and traditionally leverage off of social channels. Even at their best, current implementations of OpenID or Mozilla’s new BrowserID do scarcely more than provide a “yes, this person has an account” answer to “who is this user?”. Even at their best, when identifying profile information is made available, it is based completely off of either anonymous social account details or a perceived real identity – not the true identity of a user.
This traditional social identity approach can be a major hindrance for publishers when attempting to build an identity system to not only identify their users, but also to enhance the entire product discovery and buying experience.
This is where the new PayPal Access identity system comes in. Building an identity foundation in commerce, around the 100 million plus verified PayPal consumers, we are allowing publishers and merchants the ability to create powerful, smart direct identity channels that are based in the true identity of that consumer base.
Besides the foundation of true user identity, publishers will also gain the value behind the 45 million events PayPal processes per day. Historical buying history of users allows us to be able to present buying categories for users (how likely they are to buy a particular product), or trust ratings (much like an identity credit score), all bundled directly into the user identity.
Taking this a step further, having payment and identity tied together means that you can skip steps in the checkout process, decreasing user drop-off by being able to skip the login stage, prefilling shipping and receiving information, user details, and much more.
PayPal Access is truly tied to the needs of publishers, allowing them to build an intelligent open identity system directly into their markets. Through this commerce based identity approach, publishers can generate increased sales, build richer user profiles and enhance the buying experiences of their users.
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The Future of the Cookbook
Whither the cookbook? It’s a question that publishers, authors, agents, just about anyone in the industry is asking these days. Questions around enhanced content, monetization/licensing opportunities, and new media opportunities with bloggers all have prompted great rethinking of the processes by which cookbooks come to market. But what does that mean for traditional workflows? And do content creation methods change when user-generated content is becoming more prevalent every day?
This panel is meant to explore some of these issues in depth, by looking at what publishers are trying to do today and in the future. What are some of the upcoming content monetization channels? How can publishers become more flexible in their approach to content, both in-print and online? And where do publishers, authors and other cookbook constituents fit in the conversation happening online with consumers?
The idea of the “cookbook” is changing rapidly and will only continue to do so. The purpose of this panel is to explore what the future of this niche industry is and how it will evolve over time, realizing that our idea of a cookbook today may just mean recipe content in all of its forms tomorrow.
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Renovating Print Assets for Digital Publishing
by Mike Rankin
All publishers have legacy print products that could be made into viable new products in the digital marketplace. Opportunities are lost because great content is trapped in files that are unsuitable for digital publishing. How hard is it to go from print to digital? How do you go about converting old files? What if you can’t even find all the files? How can you apply the structure and formatting you need for a digital product? How do you deal with complex layouts? What color issues may arise? What about rights and permissions for fonts and artwork? How can you enrich old assets with new media and interactivity? How can you deal with all this in an efficient, cost-effective manner? This session will seek to answer each of these questions.
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Connecting Content With Readers Worldwide
by Phil Ollila and Larry Brewster
Expanding the reach of content to new markets through a network of selected book manufacturing and distribution partners is a game changer for the book industry. Ingram’s Global Connect is more than a printer network. Using Global Connect, publishers are printing locally around the world, getting titles to new markets and retailers, and having a direct link to local consumer demand. What differentiates Ingram’s Global Connect program from other printer network solutions is the unique combination of print on demand partners with established local retail channel relationships. Publishers are gaining access to new sales channels without the worry of inventory in market, importation and customs issues, and shipping and warehousing costs. No matter where their readers are, publishers are reaching them and never missing a sale.
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If It Bends, It's Funny
by Valla Vakili
If it Bends, it’s Funny
“If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it isn’t.”
That’s Alan Alda as Lester, in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.
It’s also what happens when you use industry standards—like ONIX, and ePUB—to move book discovery in a different direction. One closer to how the reader thinks of discovery, and further from how the standards present themselves.
The reality is, when you start using ONIX and ePUB to enable new forms of discovery, you have a honeymoon period where, for the most part, it’s funny. Conventions and ways of doing things locked in these standards that you can bend, you can twist, to get to where you need to go. You can laugh it off as you wonder, wouldn’t it be better if things weren’t done this way?
The honeymoon ends quickly when you realize, to really get to that new place—a scalable way of discovering and connecting creative works that starts with simple models of user behavior first, and works backward from that—you have to break the standards.
At Small Demons, we’ve been bending ONIX and ePub for some time now, and we’ve built a set of hacks around their limitations. This talk will share learnings from the past year of adapting standards meant to do some things well to a whole new set of tasks, for which they aren’t really suited, but where they’re still the only game in town. The audience will see new uses for familiar data, a number of use cases where the data bends, those where it breaks, and suggestions on how we can move forward with a set of practices that meet the needs of “reader first” discovery.
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- Tuesday 14th 30
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