Launch DBW

Publisher Launch Conferences kicks off Digital Book World Week with our own one-day show on Monday, January 23–while the DBW workshops and exhibits are open, but the day before the DBW conference begins. We will present the first-ever US full-day show focused on children’s publishing and the digital transition.

See the full program now.

The program follows our successful half-day show at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. Our six packed presentations included fascinating, detailed research from Sesame Workshop on how children and parents actually use ebook apps and interactive with digital children’s product, with practical recommendations, and updated consumer data on children’s ebook purchasing and use from Bowker. More data came from ebookseller Kobo, which sparked a lively discussion of how to create better browsing of full-text children’s ebooks.

We heard from top executives: Disney Publishing Worldwide president Russell Hampton said digital presents “a way to grow the publishing piece” and indicated both tablets and “believe it or not, the smartphone” are “changing the market for us”; and Ruckus Media founder Rick Richter explained why “producing a stand-alone app is not a rational business model” or a “scalable business” and addressed pricing experimentation.

Touchy Books explained their solution to the marketing and discovery problem: building their own free app as a bookstore (with over a million downloads), and former gaming executives emphasized the model of developing for the world in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish all at once.

Our full-day show at Digital Book World will cover similar material while ranging even further and wider, as the new color reading tablets from Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble join the 40 millions iPads and more in finally opening the way to a robust market for digital children’s books.

Register now. The show is $495 on a standalone basis and $395 when bundled with your full Digital Book World conference registration.

For background, see the program from our half-day show at Frankfurt, and read the coverage in Publishers Lunch and Publishing Trends.