Thanks to a generous grant from The Bridge Awards I was able to attend the 2016 Futurebook Conference in London on December 04, 2016. This was in order to further my doctoral research on whether social media can be a slush pile for traditionally published products and how publishing models need to shift to accommodate the rise of the citizen author. You can read more about my research here.
The Futurebook conference was one that I have long looked at from the outside and long wondered what went on there. It calls itself ‘Europe’s largest publishing conference’ and it truly is. Delegates from every country and major/minor publishing house converged at the Mermaid Theatre right on the Thames to take part. Since there were two strands that ran concurrently, the hard part was choosing which talks to attend.
The introduction and opening keynotes were give by Annette Thomas (Springer Nature), Stephen Page (F&F), Susan Jurevics (Pottermore), and Akala, were well planned to give an overview of the state of publishing, a grand opening to the ideas of the day. The standout speakers were Jurevics and Akala. Jurevics was a major figure at Sony before becoming the CEO of Pottermore, managing to mix the magic of Harry Potter with her knowledge of the technology industry. Akala is a performance poet, who gave flare to the opening keynotes, but I was not sure why he was at the conference. Sure, I spoke to him after about the use of poetic rhythms in classical poetry (to do with his Hip Hop Shakespeare project) and its links to modern rap music, but that was based on the nostalgia for my past PhD in poetry writing, not publishing.
One of the main things I wanted to see while at the conference was the Content Unbound sessions. In these 2 sessions we heard from representatives from publishing houses that are doing new and different things such as: Booktrack, Quarto, Own It!, Hodder Faith (who are doing interesting things in presenting a classic religious text), Audible, and Touch Press among others. The innovation and forward thinking of these people give me hope for the industry.
The session called “How mobile changes everything” presented several speakers who looked at the use of mobile within their publishing bubble. The most interesting was the talk by Anna Jean Hughes from the Pigeonhole. Pigeonhole is a way to present eBooks to a reader. Hughes spoke of knowing the books and readers well enough that they could tell when a reader was hesitating before a scary/stressful part of the book and could even suggest that perhaps they would send the reader a comforting email if they had stopped reading, letting them know that the hard part will soon be over. This data-mining within the eBook is fascinating, and reminiscent of Amazon in a more boutique package.
The final breakout session I attended was the BookTech Showcase where the finalists got to pitch their platforms to a set of judges in front of an audience. They were limited to a strict 5 minutes. Finalists included Oolipo, Ooovre, Reedsy, Shulph, The Owl Field, Together Tales, and Write-Track. Though I was pulling for Oolipo, as I have recently interviewed the founder and really understood the premise, the winner was Reedsy, which is, in essence, a freelance marketplace where an author can get help from well-known editors, cover designers, and more.
At the end of the day there were keynotes by Michael Tamblyn on the reader’s manifesto followed by a talk by Charlie Redmayne of HarperCollins UK which nicely rounded out a day of overwhelmingly interesting and positive thoughts on the future of publishing. However, I cannot help but feel that there is a short-sightedness to the industry, but maybe because I spend my time looking to the future of publishing looking beyond the next year or two or three, where publishing has never been very good at that.
Take a moment to read about The Bridge Awards, which ‘is a philanthropic venture that provides funding for the arts. This support is given in the form of annual awards and regular micro-funding opportunities.’