Speakers

Charlotte Abbott
Publishing Journalist and Digital Strategy Consultant

Charlotte Abbott coaches authors and agents on creative and results-driven applications of emerging e-publishing tools and services. Her workshops are grounded in her 20 years in the book industry, as a senior editor at Publishers Weekly and an acquiring editor at HarperCollins and Avon Books, as well as her fascination with digital reading and communities, which began with the first wave of e-books in 1999.

Find her on Twitter (@charabbott), where she moderates #followreader chats with industry innovators on Fridays from 4-5pm ET.

Molly Barton
VP Digital Publishing, Business Development & Strategy, Penguin USA and President, Book Country

Molly Barton, Vice President of Penguin in the US overseeing Digital Publishing, Business Development and Strategy, is also President of Penguin’s new subsidiary Book Country, an online community for fiction writers. She has overseen the company from its inception. Always looking for better ways to serve writers and readers, she leads Penguin’s efforts to publish apps, enhanced eBooks, and eSpecials, in addition to launching new business models, strategies, and partnerships.

Iris Blasi
Coordinator of Social Media, Hilsinger Mendelson East

Iris Blasi is the Digital Media Coordinator at literary PR firm Hilsinger Mendelson East. Formerly, she was an associate editor at Union Square Press, and she’s also worked for Random House, NBC, and The Idea Logical Company. Her writing has appeared in outlets including The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Dow Jones Newswires, Publishers Weekly, BUST Magazine, The Jewish Daily Forward, Bitch Magazine, and BookPage.

Michael Cader
Publishers Lunch and PublishersMarketplace.com

Michael Cader is the creator of Publishers Lunch, the largest-circulation book publishing industry publication in the world, and its companion website PublishersMarketplace.com, which offers comprehensive news, databases, tools and more for book publishing professionals. For 15 years he created and produced over 300 books through his book packaging company, Cader Books.

Mark Coker
Founder, CEO and Chief Author Advocate, Smashwords

Mark Coker founded Smashwords in 2008 to change the way books are published, marketed and sold. In the three years since its launch, Smashwords has grown to become the leading ebook distributor serving indie authors, small presses and literary agents.  Over 25,000 authors from around the world have published more than 65,000 books at Smashwords. Mark is a graduate of the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, where he received his B.S. in marketing.

Rich Fahle
Founder & CEO, Astral Road Media

For Astral Road, Rich Fahle draws on his extensive background as a marketing agent for authors, publishers, and book retailers in the emerging digital marketplace. Before launching Astral Road in 2010, Fahle served as Vice President, Digital Content, E-Commerce and Entertainment at Borders. Prior to Borders, Fahle was Chief Spokesperson and Communications Director for C-SPAN, the national public affairs cable television network based in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Eric Kettunen
Constellation/VP of Marketing, Publishers Group West

Since 2004 Eric Kettunen has worked at Berkeley-based Publishers Group West, the leading book sales and distribution company and a division of the Perseus Books Group.  When Perseus launched Constellation Digital Services in 2007 Kettunen was responsible for rolling out the new ebook, print-on-demand, short-print-run and other services to PGW client publishers and has managed subsequent ‘waves’ of new vendors and services since then.

Deidre Knight
Senior Agent and President, The Knight Agency

Deidre Knight established The Knight Agency in 1996 after working in the entertainment industry. In the years since that time, she has built a dynamic, bestselling client list, placing nearly eight hundred titles in a broad range of categories, including romance, women’s fiction, personal finance, business, popular culture, African American history, self-help, religion, health, and parenting.

Ron Martinez
Founder, Aerbook

Ron Martinez is the founder of Aerbook, an eBook design and development company and publisher. He’s authored, designed, or developed entertainment, educational, and information titles in formats ranging from paperback book to massively multiplayer online game, and also spent a number of years heading up the global IP Innovation group at Yahoo!

Bob Mayer
Author

Bill Newlin
Publisher, Avalon Travel

Bill Newlin is publisher of Avalon Travel (Perseus), home of Rick Steves, Moon, Let’s Go, and other travel series.  Bill began publishing travel guides in 1982 and has been publishing and promoting online since 1994. Current digital projects include complex ePub editions, multimedia apps, SPR chapter excerpts, web and social media marketing, and the development of XML workflows.

Patricia Payton
Senior Director, Publisher Relations & Content Development, Bowker

Patricia Payton, Senior Director of Publisher Relations and Content Development for Bowker, is responsible communicating metadata requirements and best practices to publishers of all sizes. Patricia has experience retail bookstores as well as international markets. She also holds a Master’s degree in Library Information Science specializing in Digital Libraries as well as an MBA. She actively contributes to BISG and other industry committees. You can find her on twitter @DiscoverBowker.

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.

Joshua Tallent
eBook Architects

Joshua Tallent has been an eBook developer since 2002. He is an acknowledged expert on the Kindle and ePub formats, and his book, Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide, has been praised as the most thorough explanation of the Kindle format available. Joshua founded eBook Architects, his eBook design and consulting business, in 2008, providing services to both publishers and authors, with a focus on complex projects and enhanced eBooks. He regularly teaches at conferences and workshops about building and designing eBooks, and he is a vocal advocate for beautiful, functional, accessible eBooks.

Michael Tamblyn
EVP, Content, Sales and Merchandising, Kobo Inc.

At Kobo Michael is responsible for sales, publisher and industry relations, content acquisition, and the merchandising experience across all of Kobo’s web and mobile services. He co-founded Canada’s first online bookstore Bookshelf.ca, which was purchased by Indigo Books & Music in 1998, where he served as vice president of online operations. Most recently, Michael was the founding CEO of the supply chain agency BookNet Canada, where he launched the national sales reporting service BNC SalesData and authored the publishing technology call-to-arms, “Six Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better.” Michael has a Masters in Business Administration from University of Western Ontario.

Scott Waxman
Principal of the Waxman Literary Agency, Chairman and Co-Founder of Diversion Books

In 1997, Scott founded the Waxman Literary Agency, a mid-sized agency with a roster of more than 200 authors, including many national bestsellers in a variety of fiction and non-fiction categories. More recently, Scott has founded Diversion Books, a new arm of the agency focused on providing the agency’s authors as well as authors outside of the agency with the benefits of electronic publishing. Diversion has successfully published dozens of frontlist backlist titles, offering authors and agents a total epublishing solution that includes editorial, design, conversion, distribution, marketing and accounting.

Ted Weinstein
President, Ted Weinstein Literary Management

Ted Weinstein is a literary agent who represents a wide range of authors of nonfiction for adults. With a background that includes traditional book publishing as well as the dot.com world, he is currently working with many clients on direct publishing, multimedia projects, and other new publishing models, in addition to a wide range of traditional book projects. More information about his agency and clients is available at www.twliterary.com.

David Wilk
Booktrix, Aerbook, and Creative Management Partners

David Wilk has broad experience in book publishing, sales, distribution, marketing and digital technologies. He operates Creative Management Partners, providing content creators and owners with a range of publishing services, including editorial, print and digital production, sales and marketing strategies, website development and consulting services. Websites include booktrix.com, livewriters.com, writerscast.com, prospectapress.com. Wilk writes and speaks about the book industry. He is Director of Marketing for Good Business International (www.good-b.com) and a partner in Aerbook (www.aerbook.com) creating next generation ebooks for tablets and smartphones. Current and recent clients include publishers, authors, thought leaders, corporations and nonprofits.