Travels with Tyler, New York City
Publishers Weekly put on one of the most compelling NYC-based publishing trade shows in years on Wednesday, May 22nd at New York University’s Kimmel Center. Blending the best of the in-person tradeshow aspects of Book Expo (on a more manageable scale) with quality sessions akin to those one would see at Book Industry Study Group’s Annual Meeting, the US Book Show made for a productive day for over 800 publishing professionals from trade and academic publishers, as well as providers like agents, epub platforms, educational programs like Agate Publishing Academy, and Perfectbound’s platform for connecting printers and publishers.
The opening CEO roundtable – featuring Jonathan Karp (CEO, Simon & Schuster), Aman Kochar (CEO, Baker & Taylor), Mary McAveney (CEO, Abrams), and Peter Warwick (CEO, Scholastic), was moderated by Lucia Rahilly, the Global Editorial Director at McKinsey & Company. The discussion ranged from the opportunity for growth in the audiobooks space, the need to protect librarians and libraries, considerations about AI, and the overall state of the industry. Deep coverage of this and other sessions is available in this article from Publishers Weekly, this further article from Publishers Weekly, and in the May 23 issue of Publishers Lunch (subscriptions may be required to access article content).
Other key sessions included Clare O’Rourke’s session covering how to manage P&L’s on trade publications, Steve Potash from Overdrive talking about harnessing influencers to drive book sales, sessions geared towards learning more about the agency side of the business, and a compelling panel consisting of Dawn Davis (Publisher, 37 Ink), Sally Kim (Publisher, Little, Brown), Todd Shuster (Co-CEO of Aevitas Creative), and Dominique Raccah (CEO, Sourcebooks) talking about leadership and building a career in publishing.
One of the sessions that perhaps drew the most attention was Ulysses Press and Perfectbound’s Keith Riegert presenting about AI. Keith’s practical walk through of a number of tools available to publishers, and the pros and cons of AI was one of the most discussed sessions of the day. And if you missed it – well, Keith generously shared his slides. It’s worth spending 20-30 minutes going through the slides showing how to navigate different platforms (far more than just ChatGPT) to consider ways to be more efficient with everything from contract boilerplate to more exciting tasks.
The above resources we linked to should give a good insight as to the value of the day – and a number of the takeaways in case you weren’t able to attend. As always, Contact Us if there are any topics above that resonate that you would like to explore in greater detail. The team at US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services are always here to help you.
