Digital lands at BEA
Vook wasn’t the only e-book outfit at BEA, but we were one of the most visible, hanging around the floor and visiting lots of publishing folk to demonstrate our product. I’m a veteran of this book fair, but I have to say I have rarely encountered such enthusiasm, especially for a product that’s a little “out of the box.” For all the fretting that the book business is archaic and hidebound, there were dozens of “that’s cool”’s and “I want in”s, especially after Vook CEO Brad Inman spoke on the Big Ideas panel. The BEA organizers are enthused about new technology, too, having organized, for the first time, a special “digital area” at the otherwise old-fashioned fair. Some people worried that this was ghettoizing, but I thought otherwise; with traditional book publishers pulling back on what they spent at the fair on booths and parties and such, it seemed a natural progression for technology to take more of center stage. (And, by the way, give one of the few great parties at the Fair)
Speaking of ghettoizing, I couldn’t help but notice that in the business section of the Wednesday’s NY times there were two, count em two, stories about technology and media. This might not seem all that unusual, but we media hounds in New York still remember the Circuits section, now disbanded: Now, that was a ghetto. I think it’s a great sign that we’re all up there next to GM (and looking a whole lot better than GM, I can’t help but notice) — finally, forward thinking companies are allowed to sit at what Woody Allen once quipped (in another context) was the “grown up”’s table.
Related posts:
Recent Comments