On Friday 30th Nov I attended the FutureBook conference. This event is run by the BookSeller and is the publishing industry’s keynote event where they focus on the tech and futurist ideas related to the publishing industry.

I was keen to learn as I am an author, love books and work in tech!

Ps - In April 2018 I became the first author in the world to publish my book on the blockchain. Check out the article here.

The highlight of the event was a presentation by the one and only Seth Godin, a veteran and futurist in the publishing field.

He spoke about the importance of the publishing industry in having to embrace tech to stay ahead and that it was no longer a choice to include tech into their business models but a necessity.

He also said that consumers were not bored with retail, but bored with boring retail, This really struck a chord with me as my startup, MarketOrders, is helping high street jewellery stores to thrive by embracing tech.

Retail is not dead, boring retail is!

Customers want to be able to use tech to view and purchase their products. They are no longer looking for just a product. They want an experience. They want retail to be as exciting and fast-moving as the contents on their mobile phones.

Sam Conniff, author of Be More Pirate spoke about his views of the ‘an industry ill at ease with itself and afraid of tech. AI is already here it’s not a choice. Publishing culture needs to change to attract the talent ‘ he said.

Molly Flatt, the associate editor of The Bookseller also issues a rallying call for us to focus on the real disruption coming which is from competing forms of consumer entertainment.

Audio used to be used as a distraction, but now there's more evidence that people are more actively listening in a similar way they'd dedicate themselves to a physical book" said Jon Watt, Head of Audio

Readers are right in whatever way they want to read. It's not about digital and physical fighting for dominance, it's about reaching as many readers in whatever way they want to read.

Here are a few more soundbites of the day:

‘’Retail is not in trouble; boring retail is in trouble’’ - Seth Godin

‘’Seek the smallest viable audience not the largest one’’ - Seth Godin

''A device uses reading as a form of connection. And books use reading as a form of disconnection. And we've got to figure out how to coexist in a world where people are fully hooked on connection.'' - Seth Godin

‘’Blockchain is triple entry accounting with privacy’’ - Josef Marcs, Publica CEO

"Think big. Big is going to happen really fast." - Molly Flat

‘’When you hear no, imagine you heard Go!’’ - Sam Conniff

Start up tips from Emmanual Nataf - Reedsy

Reedsy allows authors to find and work with the best publishing professionals: from developmental editors to book cover designers, publicists and translators.

Emmanual is the co-founder of Reedsy, and won the Startup award a few years ago at FutureBook. In his session he shared his top 5 tips from starting a start up:

Publishers cannot teach you anything about tech. Change comes from outsiders (and this is something i also agree with!!) Publishing is a small and shrinking industry so fundraising can be harder. He shared his struggles with fundraising in an industry difficult to scale. Partnerships are key in the publishing space but they can take up to 2 years to build His biggest mistakes were in hiring the wrong people The independent book market is growing so there are many opportunities still in this space and more customers to be served!

'We built this for you'' - Josef Marcs, Publica CEO

Josef Marcs, Publica CEO also gave a presentation and pitched at the start up awards. Here is a snippet of him speaking at the event.

Josef also talks about how 'borderless books' in this clip.

How authors can take charge and 'tell their own stories' in this clip.

And below is a pic with me and Josef!

Josef spoke about the amazing progress Publica has made in the short space of a year. From allowing authors to run their own book ICOs to creating apps that readers can read from.

I answered questions from the audience about the trends in blockchain and how authors were seeking out author- centric business models.

In conclusion I strongly believe 2019 will be the year when more and authors and readers embrace wider forms of distributing their books with blockchain and there are many exciting times ahead for publishing and blockchain especially if the traditional publishing industry embraces tech including AI, machine learning and data.

Interested in learning more about blockchain and books?



























































