How many DADs do you have?
Shatzkin once more took the stage in the afternoon as he moderated a panel discussion on Digital Asset Distribution. This was a great panel which included HarperCollins, Random House, Holtzbrinck, and Ingram Digital Group.
Carolyn Pittis of HarperCollins began by talking about using book content "everywhere possible" - emphasizing that publishers should have control of how the content is used. She also noted that "those who scan books for free" (ahem! Google; ahem! Microsoft) don't always produce the quality that an individual publisher can produce if they maintain control of the content.
Pittis also noted that the new widget released by Harper earlier this year has proven to be the third most powerful driver of consumers to the HarperCollins website; 14,000 books have widgets so far.
Up next was Brian Napack from Holtzbrinck, who gave a very wry and witty presentation. Holtzbrinck has chosen Ingram to manage its digital asset distribution, and Brian stressed that a powerful digital infrastructure is key to succeeding in an era increasingly dominated by technology.
He also mentioned that Holtzbrick is launching a social networking site for books called Lovely Books. It's in beta at the moment.
Kent Freeman of Ingram Digital stated that Ingram currently has 170,000 ebooks archived and ready for distribution among a variety of channels - Lightning Source, VitalSource, and MyiLibrary. Their digital warehouse service supports a wide variety of formats (including audio)...and, Kent said, "We have not yet announced our widget, but we will shortly." Which is, of course, a form of announcement.
Matt Shatz of Random House also discussed the Random House widget, which is a bit different from the Harper one - there's no branding on the images, for example, and it includes a search function which the Harper widget doesn't have. Matt confirmed that Random House's marketing efforts amount to "fishing where the fish are" - and that the Internet is universally acknowledged as the space where consumers discover products, sample them, and do research online.
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