By John A. Sellers | PW - Mar 27, 2014
L. to r.: Katie McCalmont, Stephen Barbara, Cecilia de la Campa, and IfBookThen's Marco Ghezzi.
The TOC Bologna conference may be no more, but this year's Bologna Book Fair attendees had a chance to get several perspectives on the ongoing impact that changing technologies are having on children’s publishing at the first Digital Rights Workshop, held on Wednesday afternoon. The workshop was held in association with IfBookThen, an annual conference that explores the future of publishing (organized by Italian e-bookstore BookRepublic), and its participants emphasized a need to think nimbly and flexibly, whether one is a traditional publisher, a developer, an agent, or an author.
Eric Huang, development director at children’s media company Made in Me, opened with a keynote address that traced his own career path, from a kid who “loved geeky things” to his attempts at working in film, which eventually led to positions with Disney Publishing, Penguin Australia and U.K., Mind Candy, and elsewhere. Using his own successes and missteps as evidence, Huang built his presentation around four areas: brand over format, user experience, iteration, and discoverability.
With regard to branding, Huang spoke of his time at Disney and Penguin (“Love them or hate them,” he said of Disney, “they are a master of brands”); regarding iteration, he encouraged publishers to think the way app creators do, regularly releasing updates, bug fixes, and adjustments to their products. “If you put something out and it’s not perfect, it’s OK,” said Huang, “because you can constantly test and tweak it.”
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