BEA Day 1

I had so much fun walking around--in many ways, BEA feels like a big party for publishing people, particularly agents. Agents sort of get a pass to sit in panels, network, and, of course, swag.

This has been my experience in the past, but it certainly wasn't yesterday. As foreign rights director, I had to have, like "meetings." With some delightful publishers from Japan. Of particular interest were innovations that the publisher NHK (the BBC of Japan) is working on to bring ebooks to the Japanese market.

There's currently no hardware for reading ebooks in Japan. Consensus seems to be that this is because Japanese people are not interested in a dedicated reader device--something that only reads ebooks. It's a complaint that Western readers had, too but got over, and that is now being solved by WiFi and 3G readers. And the stupid iPad.

Instead of trying to get readers to adopt new hardware, NHK is working on a platform in mobile app form (it's only in Japanese so far, drat) that will allow people to tweet or post to facebook (and other social media sites, I'm sure) right from their reading environment--from their Kindle for iPhone app, for instance. So they can have their reader+ on their phone. The challenge will be getting people to read on a phone, but I'm seeing more of that even over here.

May be reiventing a couple wheels there, but it's an interesting approach. Our discussion centered on whether people even want that capability. These days, escape from social media and social _______ seem to be the main draws to reading for most.

Interesting...

...relationship between book, short fiction, and TV series. Of course, it doesn't hurt if you're Elmore Leonard, either. Read about it here.

I think we're going to see a lot more of this type of reverse- or laterally engineered content. Where a book idea may come from an idea for a screen or teleplay, spawning app or enhanced ebook ideas, etc. I also think it's going to change how we think about packaging a book for sale, whether to an editor behind the scenes or in public on the B&N table or web.

Hmm...

Newz

The past few weeks have been filled with much excitement, sadness, thoughts of world domination, anxiety, hair tearing, flung projectiles, and some flowers. And birthdays, but that's neither here nor there.

What I'm trying to tell you is there have been, as Kafka would say, "developments."

I'm not working--ahem. Excuse me. *clears throat* I'm...*pause*, *squeezes* bridge of nose*

Janet torments me from afar now, and let's just leave it at that.

I'm sad to announce the above, but also very excited to announce that I started this week at Lowenstein Associates, where I will be Digital Strategist and Foreign Rights Manager. I'm also building my own list (details to come--I'm not open to submissions just yet).

More to come!