A “lively, stat-packed day” at Launch BEA

Publishers Launch BEA 2012 was a packed day of data, insights and news. We are posting slides from many of the presentations, and we’ll have some audio on the way soon as well.

We’d like to thank BEA for their support and our fantastic speakers and sponsors for their help in making this our best show yet.

Some highlights from Publishers Launch BEA:

“One presentation of widespread interest was Ingram chief content officer Phil Ollila‘s new data–commissioned by Publishers Launch–analyzing how the rise of ebooks affects what is sold in physical bookstores. Ollila’s primary focus was to identify opportunities for both publishers and retailers to boost sales of print books. Building on the ABA’s data showing that member stores reporting to Bookscan grew sales 13.4 percent (in units) so far in 2012, Ollila said Ingram’s experience was that “some bookstores are having fantastic years, and others have not adjusted to the marketplace.” That adjustment means recognizing that bookstores will have a harder time selling fiction and an easier time selling certain categories of nonfiction, in greater depth.

from Publishers Lunch
Presentation: Phil Ollila explores A Changing Retail Marketplace

“Michael Cader gave his signature summation of all the important themes, and introduced the first speaker, Hachette COO Ken Michaels, who gave a well-constructed talk on the checklist of changes that publishers need to make to be efficiently poised for a print-and-digital future that will be orchestrated via the cloud.   He argued that, with the right partners, and in a cloud-based system, a publisher could be “up and running in 90 days.”

from Publishing Trends
Presentation: Michael Cader reviews Book Publishing in 2012
Presentation: Ken Michaels on Software as a Service

“In a lively presentation, Macmillan evp digital publishing Fritz Foy announced that Tor/Forge will launch a DRM-free ebookstore this July. It will sell all 2,000+ ebooks from which the company is lifting DRM, and “eventually, offerings from other publishers as well.” … Foy was joined onstage by three Tor authors: Cory Doctorow, Charlie Stross and John Scalzi. Doctorow repeated his message that DRM “prevents competition, not copying.” Stross noted that “DRM is poison to voracious genre readers…who expect to reread the best of them” and want to preserve access to their sizable digital libraries. Given the pace of technological change, he noted that “an ebook with DRM is unlikely to be readable in more than 5 years time; 10 years at the most.” Scalzi reminded the audience that “your author is your frontline customer contact” and observed, “all we know is that our readers are unhappy and they are projecting it at us, and they want us to do something about it.”

from Publishers Lunch
Presentation: Macmillan Takes Tor/Forge DRM-Free

“Twenty-four percent of Indian adults with Internet access have bought an ebook, Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher said in a panel at the Publishers Launch BEA conference today, and 18 percent of Brazilian adults have done so. In predicting ebook penetration rates, it’s key not just to look at the “technology-savvy” countries, Gallagher said, but to look at the size of the overall population combined with Internet penetration rate. “Suddenly, India becomes the second largest potential market” after the U.S., he said, followed by Brazil. The UK and Australia have high Internet penetration, but their populations are small.

from paidContent
Presentation: Kelly Gallagher takes A Look at eBook Growth Around the World

Check out more coverage of the show around the Web.