Contributed by SAS Publishing's Julie M. Platt, Mary Beth Steinbach, Shelly Goodin, and Sandy Varner

Wednesday, February 16

Julie M. Platt
TOC ended with a series of presentations that focused in how to get content noticed. In thinking about our authors, their content, and our users, my key takeaways today were:

All content should serve the reader and help him or her be excellent. With every section and "page" of content, authors should challenge themselves to think about how that content will help the reader. How is what you're putting in the book going to help your reader and how are you going to motivate them to take some action as a result of reading the content?

Marketing plans for content shouldn't start after the content is developed. It should start BEFORE The content is written. The marketing plans will influence how the content is developed, what content is included, and how it is structured. When content and marketing work together, the reach for the product increases.

Engage readers throughout the development process. Gather feedback as content is being developed. Encourage discussion about the content once it's available.

As the volume of information increases, readers will look to trusted curators to deliver the kind of content that will best serve their needs.

Mary Beth Steinbach
Today' sessions included: morning keynotes, what do ereading customers really really want, #ISBN hour live with Laura Dawson, open webby book publishing systems, and ereading from the ereader's perspective.

Here I am wrapping up at TOC 2011. My main challenge at this conference was choosing the "right" sessions to attend. With so many session offerings (and some very creative session titles), it was difficult to choose where to spend my time. The good news is that there wasn't really a wrong place to be. TOC is all about publishing, and other people's experiences can often teach me something that I can apply to my own life and work.

One of the recurring themes at the conference was the expectation that ePub 3 and HTML 5 are coming soon, and that both will greatly improve the ePub experience. I was especially pleased to hear that existing accessibility standards will be included in both ePub 3 and HTML 5.

Another theme was that converting print to ePub is not (or maybe should not be) a linear process. More than a couple pubs pundits are recommending either digital first or a totally separate process for ebook workflows, the thinking being that publishers are currently trying to stretch existing talent to cover both print and ePub, which might jeopardize both sides of this equation. Food for thought.

Shelly Goodin
One of the sessions I most enjoyed today was Literary Reviewing in the Digital Age. This thought provoking panel was bittersweet. Newspapers’ book review sections have been greatly reduced or completely done away due to dwindling newspaper sales. While millions of books were published last year, there are fewer and fewer options to be reviewed. However, the migration to digital has sparked creative genius in a few pillars of the book reviewing community. For instance, Kirkus Reviews now not only lends credibility to books it favorably reviews, but has begun reviewing hundreds of storytelling apps. And Washington Post Book World reviewer (and closet comedian) Ron Charles recently launched The Totally Hip Book Review Series. Here’s one example:

Perhaps SAS Publishing will try this in the future…

Sandy Varner
Embrace change. Re-tool your organization. Speed. Make mistakes quickly. Portability. Accessibility. Re-think your book map. These are just a few of the take-away words from today's sessions.

I was impressed with Kevin Kelly, Wired, who shared six trends he expected to see in the future:

1. Screening - who would have thought 20 years ago we would we would read a book on a screen or that our phone would have a screen. 2. Interactive - reading a book is becoming an interactive activity. 3. Sharing - we want to share our notes, access social media, all from the cloud. 4. Accessing - customers are moving from owning to accessing. 5. Flowing - books today are produced and finished. Digital books flow. They are always on and never finished. 6. Generating - the Internet is a copy machine. The new value is becoming things that cannot be copied such as immediacy, personalization, authenticity, and findable.

The session that most hit home for me today was one I attended at the last minute. Donna Raccah, Sourcebooks, spoke about changing our publishing business. Editors must find new rich content; production new design skills; management new organization skills. While many new skills are needed to meet today's digital market, most are extensions of existing work. It's not just the book that's changing - book publishing is changing.

Embrace change. Ummmmm.....seems like a recurring theme for ToC every year. How well are we listening?

Thank you for sharing our experience at this year's Tools of Change conference!