BookCampTO 2010

This Saturday I rose earlier than for work hours (!!!) and gritted my teeth for a weekend dose of the TTC for good reason: BookCampTO. What’s a BookCamp? Basically it’s an excuse for people involved in the book industry to leave our computers at home (and show off our iPads and iPhones) and gather to match names to twitter handles, faces to facebooks, and discuss the future of the publishing industry and the book itself. Sessions are fairly free-form and covered a wide range of topics all related to books in the hopes of sharing experiences, solving problems and speculating on the future.

Here’s a few notes from the sessions I attended:

9:30  Launching a Digital Business from Inside a Print Business (Sulemaan Ahmed & Jenny Bullough, Harlequin)

The focus of this session was, as the title indicates, about launching your digital business. The talk was well-attended because most people know that Harlequin’s worth listening to on all things digital, but it seems that the presenters should have picked a topic that was a little more advanced. Most people in the room already HAD a digital business, and something more focused on promotion, sales, distribution etc. of that title would likely have been more beneficial.

Some info tidbits:

• Out of 300 monthly titles they’re doing 40 or 50 ebook exclusive or digital first titles. Launching digital-only (and DRM-free) imprint (Carina Press) in a couple weeks.
• Once again, they reiterated the importance of going where the readers are (first they did it for women in supermarkets, now they’re doing it on the web). This’ll be a frequent refrain when discussing the online realm, and a pretty obvious point, but was a reminder to me of things that should perhaps jump up the priority list at work.
• The other interesting thing from this session was that Harlequin’s backed off a bit on their enhanced ebooks. In their 2009 BNC session they were hot on it, but it seems the concept didn’t get the uptake they’d hoped for.

10:30 What Do Authors Want? (Nichole McGill, Writer)

I was a little wary of this session, knowing it could turn into a whinefest, but hoped a) there would be some unique promotional ideas we could use with our authors or b) I could gather suggestions about ways to  better support our authors’ independent promotional efforts.

The premise of McGill’s presentation was authors just want to write. But she’s wise enough to recognize that they want to sell books too, and so toiling over a manuscript up in the your garret won’t be enough.

The discussion ranged all over the place from how to find people to talk to on twitter, to reserving your ebook rights and publishing yourself (something McGill did, but which I think would be a challenge for less web-savvy people).

A few salient points:

• Concrete examples of authors who do interesting things: Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Anthony Zuiker, Robin Sloan, and ECW’s own Joey Comeau.
• The importance of writers’ hubs in creating a network and building a fan base – works best with genre writers
• Allowing superfans to be your best advocates and rewarding them appropriately with sneak previews, freebies and guest appearances (something that again, seems to work best with genre writers with dedicated fan communities).
• Get to know authors with similar fanbases

At the very end, after much vented frustration towards publishers, I asked what a publisher could better do to support the effort of their authors. And there were crickets. Disappointing. Because here’s the thing: a lot of this extra content SHOULD come from the author. That’s what fans want. But we can also help them with tools and resources to produce that content, and then we can help them promote it. And gasp, sometimes we DO come up with ideas for the author. In the wise words of High School Musical, “We’re all in this together.”

11:30 Where are you at? Geolocation   (Ashleigh Gardner, Dundurn)

Gold star to Ashleigh for the most engaging and useful session of the day. The session was a great example of what BookCamp can be at it’s best. Ashleigh started with concrete examples of location-based promotional efforts that have worked for Dundurn, then solicited contributions from the (packed) room. She also was able to approach her topic from more than one angle: location can be about the content of the book itself (like a locations map) or about the act of reading a book in a certain location.

Technologies and approaches that came up:

• Google maps with locations, and the possibility of opening them up to the community (Dundurn had great success with one on UFO sightings, which they’ve basically lost control of)
• Dundurn also used BookCrossing, and made a trailer of them leaving the books in specific locations.
• They also did a “read local” campaign to promote specific authors
• FourSquare was a hot topic – both as a way of indicating where you’re reading, and of a way of linking certain places to book locations. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I didn’t think it was possible within the interface. But turns out it is, and it’s something I’ll explore for some of our authors.
• Project Bookmark and the Murmur project came up, which is a great one, though I’m not sure how you get content to be a part of it.
• I realized how behind the times I am as a non-smart phone user when the talk turned to QR codes and mobile tagging, which allow you to use your smart phone camera to take a picture of a barcode and get information, a download, or so on. It’s like living in a special scavenger hunt built just for you!
• Mail Chimp came up for the first time that day as a great program for email marketing: It’ll give you the IP address of people opening the messages so you know where they are, will tell you when people have opened them etc.
• Ashleigh also called out Julie Wilson about potential extensions on Seen Reading, where you could potentially feature yourself with a hashtag or Foursquare
• We talked travel apps and ebooks
• We Tell Stories: The Penguin campaign in which an author told a story using google maps
• The possibility of guided fictional tours

And that’s not even everything. But a couple reasons why I think this talk went so well:

• Ashleigh had plenty of specific examples to draw on, but was also able to approach her topic from more than one direction
• She recognized efforts by other people in the room, calling on them to contribute their own successes (like Julie with Seen Reading, or me with Poeteering).
• The topic wasn’t so out there that people couldn’t contribute, but at the same time, it was fairly novel. Some of the things discussed we might never do, but it was interesting to speculate and talk about cutting age innovation

Lunch! Tasty and there was enough food for all, but the break was a tad long when your day is long already.

2:00 CBC’s Canada Reads (Rosie Fernandez (CBC), Kimberly Walsh (CBC), Steven Beattie (Q&Q, TSR), Kerry Clare (Pickle Me This) and yours truly.

Hard to report on a session you were in, but I’ll do my best.  Basically the session started with a discussion of about the program and why the format was so successful. Kerry, Steven and I talked spinoffs and how they may have contributed to the conversation. It was wisely mentioned that the reason CR is so engaging is that the discussion of which book should win is open (as opposed to the closeted discussions deciding on the Giller or the GG). There was some discussion about integrating the everyman (Civilians!) into the competition, possible ways to celebrate the 10^th anniversary, how readers want to consume book content, and why the website might need an overhaul.

On the whole, if you’re interested in Canada Reads it was a neat place to be. With four CR employees in the room, this is as close as one can get to the ear of God without storming the CBC building. It was also a great collection of CR bloggers, and for the first time I was able to put some faces to names.  I’m not sure that there were a lot of takeaways for a non-CR context, but it was good to be part of the CR conversation. Hopefully it was beneficial for the good folks of the CBC. And while I think inviting the spin off bloggers to join the panel was a nice gesture, I’m not sure how much our own projects contributed to the discussion. We might have done just as well as audience members who are particularly engaged in topic.

3:00 Pimping Your Book (Ian Paul Marshall, Toronto Writers Mastermind)

I ended up arriving late at this session, unsure what to expect, but what I saw I actually found fairly helpful. Writer/Marketing Guy/Self-Help Guru Ian had good, concrete suggestions, and spoke with the confidence of a motivational speaker (which he is), which was kind of refreshing after the general hand-wringing of publishing.

I found his suggestions most useful from a blog point of view, but here were a few of them:

• “Links are the new currency.” And don’t I know it. After the big move I know I’ve got an uphill battle ahead to get back all the sweet linkage I’ve lost.
• Register your blog on Technorati
• Do keyword research and craft your posts using the most searched terms (a quick google search will tell you how popular they are and how many people have written about your topic)
• Tag your content well
• Use “blog commenter” like a google alert to stay up to date on your topic
• Contribute to ezines to raise your profile and get more links
• Newsletters are a great way to transmit your content (another shout out for Mail Chimp) – “Permission Marketing”
• If you’re starting a website use a self-hosted site from the start (d’oh!)
• Focus on finding direct connections, with, as Kevin Kelly theorizes, 1,000 true fans

4:00 Building and Sustaining a Community of Reader Online (Tan Light [Random House], Meg Mathur [Indigo], Kimberly Walsh [CBC])

Once again, our panelists encouraged us to “go where the readers are,” yet it’s interesting to note that they all have developed major book communities of their own. Unfortunately I thought discussing the logistics of these communities took up a bit too much of the discussion, since building your own personal facebook isn’t an option for most of the publishers in the room.

Another thing we returned to was the de-romanticization of the author, and it was suggested that the money an author receives is no longer just for writing a book, but for promotion as well.  This is all great in theory, but of course not all authors see it that way. Kelley Armstrong was offered up as the ideal author for online community building, and has mentored other authors in the area. But Tan also wisely mentioned that you need to cater online interaction to an author’s skills and comfort level.

And then the school bell rang and we all stampeded for the Bedford Academy to kill a few of our overstimulated brain cells.

On the whole, it was an engaging day, and many thanks are owed to the super team of organizers. It was great to meet some new people and put faces to people I feel like I’ve known forever. As for suggestions for the future, I have a few:

1)   Get specific, both in the presentation topics and in their content. Rather than gathering for a discussion of Community Building, pick a more specific element so that the discussion can remain more focused. When leading a discussion, throw out all the bread crumbs you can: name drop people, programs, websites whatever possible to give people things to take home and look up.

2)   Lecture theatre-style rooms lead to lectures. And it’s tricky, because the organizers want to give everyone a chance to participate. But I found the better sessions were often in smaller rooms where people felt comfortable speaking up.

3)   Think speculative fiction rather than historical romance. Let’s talk about cutting edge ideas and where they might go rather than dwelling on a sepia-toned past or well-established practices.

4)   Complaining is not constructive. Yes, the industry is changing and everyone is frustrated. Know what you want to change and come up with some suggestions might work.

For more book camp coverage, check out organizer Mark Bertils’ round up at IndexMB. And if you’re a Haligonian or are visiting soon, sign up for BookCamp Halifax in a couple weeks!