So Many Book Conferences, So Little Time
By Edward Nawotka - Publishing Perpectives

This week, while my colleagues were at O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York, I was doing something more prosaic: serving jury duty in Houston. As it turns out, you're not allowed to drive a drag racer on US federal highways. Who knew? The one thing about jury duty is that even though you can keep trying to get out of it, eventually you're going to have to do your time. It's a bit like digital publishing conferences: you can avoid them for only so long.

I would have liked to have been there -- it was wonderful last year -- but, in the end, I didn't feel too terrible about missing it. After all, there are seven more book conferences in the next few months, five of them focused exclusively on e-books and digital innovation.

(read on ...)

Are Conferences Creating a De-facto E-book Elite?
By Edward Nawotka

In our lead story today, I write about the proliferation of e-book and digital publishing conferences. There are at least five focused on digital publishing and e-books coming up in the next five months, in addition to three shows in the last three months.

The expense, not to mention the time one needs to take off work, is not insignificant. For small publishers, start-ups and others who may not have the corporate sponsorship to enable them to attend the events, it's unlikely they'd be able to attend multiple events over the course of a year.

(read on ...)