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The Developing Global Digital Infrastructure

Companies everybody in the world needs to know and what everybody needs to know about them

Part of what will make the ebook growth pattern so different in other countries than in the US is that our market has built an infrastructure that can move to other places and have a major impact wherever it goes. The most immediately apparent consequence of that infrastructure will be English-language books, which will suddenly arrive throughout the globe in numbers that will dwarf the titles available in any other language (as they have already done, for example, in Amazon’s new German Kindle store). Of course, that very same infrastructure is available to publishers and retailers worldwide for them to build on. 

This panel comprises four of the big North American players who have clear global ambitions: Google, Ingram, Kobo, and OverDrive. All four are aggregating content in all languages and are building out the capability to distribute it everywhere on the globe.

Each company has partnership propositions as well. Google Ebooks both a retailing and a wholesaling operation, enabling bookstores to work with them to offer ebooks under their own banner. Kobo retails under its own branded presence, but has also set up white label versions of its stores. Ingram and OverDrive do not sell directly to consumers but, as wholesalers, they enable any retailer anywhere to stock their titles. They both have robust English-language selections and both are aggressively extending their supplier relationships to companies outside the US in all languages.

This panel has a clear message for our international visitors: English-language ebooks will be available to the consumers in your market through multiple retail channels which will work on every conceivable ebook reader, smart phone, tablet, or computer. Local retailers in every country can avail themselves of English- and other-language books through these players, so they are all potential partners. But the international companies are also enabling a great deal of competition.

This panel will give our attendees an opportunity to get a picture of who’s likely to arrive first on their own doorstep and how long it will be before all these players, along with Amazon and Apple, are fully deployed in their market.

Moderator

Mike Shatzkin
Founder & CEO, The Idea Logical Company

Mike Shatzkin is the Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company and a widely-acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry.

In his nearly 50 years in publishing, he has played almost all the roles: bookseller, author, agent, production director, sales and marketing director, and, for the past 30 years, consultant. His insights about how the industry functions and how it accommodates digital change form the basis of all of the company’s consulting efforts.

Panelists

Cameron Drew
Vendor Relations, Kobo Inc.

Part ninja, part circus act juggler, master of seppuku, & born into the book industry. Cameron feels blessed to have been in at Kobo on the ground floor, was happy he buckled his seatbelt before the rocket launched, and truly believes we’re living through the next great renaissance in reading. Mostly he has been responsible for coaxing Publishers into the Kobo-verse and continues to do so as Kobo expands outwards into the vast publishing galaxy. He loves talking to people, so please come say hi.

Steve Potash
President and CEO, OverDrive

Steve Potash is President and CEO of OverDrive, Inc., a company that he founded in 1986. Under his leadership, OverDrive has become a leading global distributor of copyrighted eBooks and more for publishers, studios, and media producers in the US and abroad to a network of thousands of libraries, schools, and retailers worldwide.

Tom Turvey
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Google

Tom Turvey is Director, Strategic Partnerships, in the Search Services group at Google in support of Google Books, Google Scholar, and other Google products digitizing magazines and newspapers.  Google Books launched in October 2004 and now contains the searchable full-texts of more than 15 million books, over 2M contributed directly from over 30,000 of the world’s most important book publishers at http://books.google.com.

Turvey and his team were responsible for signing the majority of the world’s largest book publishers for Google Books and for striking the majority of relationships with journal publishers for Google Scholar.   More recently, Turvey’s team added thousands of ebooks to Google’s new ebookstore which launched in December 2010.  Lastly, Turvey is also responsible for Google’s library partnerships globally.

Andrew Weinstein
Vice President, Business Development, Ingram Content Group; VP & GM, Retail Solutions, Ingram Digital

Andrew Weinstein joined Ingram Digital Ventures, the predecessor company to Ingram Digital, in September 2005. Previously, Mr. Weinstein spent five years at Lightning Source Inc., as Vice President of Channel and Publisher Development. Mr. Weinstein came to Lightning Source through the acquisition of JNMedia, Inc., a leading developer of publishing technology. Before co-founding JNMedia, Inc., Mr. Weinstein was an Associate Director at BMG Direct, where he managed the financial/marketing analytical group and developed many of the analytical models used to evaluate the music club membership’s purchasing trends. In addition, he actively contributed to and managed the development, measurement, and deployment of all new online initiatives. Mr. Weinstein received his B.A. in Economics from Brandeis University and his MBA in Finance and Marketing from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.