Launch Kids

Children’s Publishing Goes Digital
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
McGraw-Hill Auditorium, NYC

Publishers Launch Conferences once again kicks off Digital Book World Week with our own one-day show devoted to the key issues facing children’s book publishers in today’s digital transition.

On Tuesday, January 15, we will present top executives and innovators discussing the future of the children’s book publishing business. We’ll see new digital products from long-standing publishers like Scholastic and Disney and new opportunities for publishers to market and sell their books from Reading Rainbow and NOOK Kids. We’ll also learn how educational publishers and technology developers are opening up new markets for trade publishers, and we’ll get an inside look at the latest in digital marketing innovation.

Children’s Publishing Goes Digital will cover the waterfront of children’s publishing today:

Data, Context, & Critical Analysis
As at all Publishers Launch events, we’ll feature data and insights from the bleeding edge to help children’s authors, agents, and publishers navigate a changing industry. Hear the latest in studies from Bowker Market Research, Scholastic, and more.
View the Bowker/Bookigee data presentation

Rethinking Intellectual Property
We’re leaving behind a world where publishers signed up books, might or might not get licensing rights, and usually published ideas that came from elsewhere. And we’re developing a world where the licensing revenue is seen as critical, and the publishers see clearly that the creation of books is a launchpad for licensing revenue against the characters, stories, and IP. Leading publishers like Penguin and HarperCollins will discuss how their companies are creating, controlling, and licensing their IP in new ways.

The Power of Platforms
Digital platforms provide the reading environment in which content is consumed. There are a lot of ways to put useful functionality into kids’ platforms: to teach them to read, to provide greater parental or teacher control, to teach the content itself or other topics or skills. Publishers and platform providers will discuss the gatekeeper role platform developers play; how content needs to be customized and reconfigured across apps, platforms, and devices; and the changing demands of the audiences for digital kids’ content — including children, parents, and teachers.

Marketing (and Selling) to Kids in the Digital Age
Technology and digital innovation are changing the way children’s publishers market their books. This of course includes publishers spending more time in online hubs –social networks and other community forums—but it also means publishers are changing the way they spend ad dollars, how they work with physical bookstores and libraries, and how they manage relationships with other media players (like movie and TV studios, app and game developers, and book bloggers and reviewers). We’ll feature a small number of case studies at the conference, highlighting some of the innovative ways children’s publishers are working to break out new titles across age segments.