I noticed an article on Spiked-Online from Frank Furedi, he’s a sociology professor at Kent University entitled ‘Let’s turn a new page in the world of reading, Teaching children that books are mere resources to be ‘consumed’ is having a baleful impact on reading, culture and the quality of public life.’

It is worth reading and I think fits rather well with the call for an emotional attachment to books that I made at the BA conference.

Okay so this was the brief:

“The book trade’s own self created campaign World Book Day, has entered its second decade and the trade has benefited from outside initiatives such as The Big Read and Richard & Judy. What could be the next Big Thing that will get us all working together and win backing from everyone in the trade

There will be four ‘pitches’ from booksellers and publishers on what future initiatives might be.”

It’s a tough one, because the pitch has to try to appeal to all in the trade and be something that might make a difference.

We’ve seen in the last couple of days that the book trade is suffering from rather sluggish growth, some might be satisfied by that, but I’m concerned that this could become a malaise where we just rely on the same customers to buy more books. With newer generations having more and more entertainment and interactive choices we need to make sure books are something they connect with.

Many people have a strong relationship with books early on in life, and the current trade campaigns, like World Book Day, do well to reinforce this. As these readers get older however we don’t tend to try to engage with those who drift away from books. They’re not reluctant readers rather just time poor, tired and have other ‘easier’ entertainment choices. This campaign is designed to try to re-connect with them and help them feel an emotional response to books again.

Missing. Lost. Found.

Enjoyed under the bedclothes in 1978 but lost in a move.

Missing

The books you always intended to read but never got round to, the copy of Lord of the Rings started but never finished, the book lent to Jenny in 1982 and never seen again. Now is an opportunity to go back to them now - replace the title lent.

Lost

The childhood favourite not held on to - ones to revisit and share with your children.

Found

The opportunity to share your emotional titles with others, to rediscover these titles and discover new books for the first time. Element of the campaign here should look to inspire people, the food critic talking about the book that inspired them, to rediscover a love of reading.

I think I came last - or would have done except Mark Rusher didn’t really pitch. Can’t win them all!

Charles Leadbeater (author of We-Think- the power of mass creativity) and David Edgerton (author of The Shock of the Old) consider how the book trade might position itself in a ‘digitally uncertain age’.

Leadbeater video:

This session is an interesting one and both speakers are well known experts - what I do get the feeling however is that some of the independents here are growing increasingly uneasy with more and more digital discussions with little practical outcomes - it’ll be interesting to see if this session is as ‘content - producer’ oriented as some of the others, which is a hot topic for publishers at the moment but can leave booksellers feeling a bit powerless.

One of the results of the polarisation of the trade in recent years between the very small independents and the large chains is that few outside Waterstone’s & Borders really have the ability to engage online utilising the ‘web 2.0 tools’ that many have talked about in the last two days - we have been in a lucky positon with BookRabbit to get the funding to do this, but to do it well isn’t cheap. We’d like to get all the independents using the site and benefiting from it - which is one solution! [end ad!]

Charlie - talked about the Microsoft ‘I love bees’ campaign for Halo 2. This ARG (Alternative Reality Game) to promote a game showed the potential engagement (in this case of 600,000) to use collaboration and sharing as part of our relationships. Interactions with customers - should also include participation, content generation as well as consumption. More and more content creation tools will become available - the book trade should look at things like open access science to see the future.

Talks about how well the promotional video has done (at the top of this page), and how books have to add value in new ways. Industries like bookselling won’t prosper without asking the difficult questions, look to the music industry’s position, the book trade is just an interface. Interfaces will grow so the potential is that there will be ‘more’ of everything - but those who benefit will be those who engage with new methods and forms. Get stuck in.

David - even Amazon sends out physical books out in cardboard using good old physical post. Why do internet gurus also still write physical books? Why if we live in this new age do books still get so much attention? Well we underestimate the book. The good bits of Wikipedia mostly comes from books - today we’ve been encouraged to believe we are entering a de-materialised digital age, yet we burn more carbon than ever before, ships carry more trade than the web, we’re hearing about a food crisis. The world is changing but the ‘old’ keeps coming back to upset the predictions of the web evangelists.

A great danger of overestimating the novelty of the present, danger in thinking new technologies associated with new thinking, digital better than book knowledge. The idea of a digital divide where people are left behind is a powerful one. But these stories get the underlying story wrong, the digital divide is between those who only have access to rubbishy digital information rather than quality information. The quality stuff needs to be paid for.

The book is still here, in ever larger numbers. Given the prediction that the book was doomed we could celebrate its survival - but it like many other things that should be ‘done for’ are still around. We should look with confidence to the future, we don’t know what it will bring, but it will be more complicated and richer than the futurists can say.

Each delegate at this year’s BA conference has a lanyard denoting their business e.g. bookseller, publishers, press, etc. Blue is for bookseller - but there seem to be precious few of them about, out of the 430 attendees to the conference, a quick count by me put the booksellers in attendance at about 100, less than 25% of the whole. Is that normal for a trade conference? It seems unlikely that at the next publisher conference booksellers will out number the publishers.

It’s a real pity, as the presentations so far have been of the highest quality I can remember, and could kick off a real debate about the future of the trade, and specifically what bookselling should look like in the future. However if booksellers aren’t here then it’s going to prove difficult to start talking.

I don’t know why they aren’t here, and I’m happy for people to disagree and say that there are as many here as always, reasons could be as obvious as the decline in independents, the sunny weather, busy shops etc. Any booksellers not here care to comment as to why not? (Sorry don’t mean that to sound chastising! Just wondering why…)

Two further sessions this afternoon - both really around the how to cope with a massively changing environment. Things that stood out:

> Former anthropologist (now at Guardian Unlimited) Meg Pickard who was excellent - talking through the way the Guardian approaches content. I particularly liked the idea of users as curators of their own experiences. Also that we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of editors within this world of user generated content

> …this was even more pronounced when we heard from the speaker from the BBC who talked about the iPlayer (which apparently eats up about 10% of the entire web bandwidth in the UK now) who said that the BBC had been saying for years how we own all their wonderful content - so now we have the technology, viewers are pushing back and saying, ‘yes if we own it why can’t we have access to all of it forever’. Which is a great question and challenge for the BBC. You can see some of their efforts so far.

> Gerald Ratner was also very funny indeed - and probably did a great job of selling his book.

It’s a pity we don’t have much of a profile here at the moment as it would be good to be a part of the

discussions people are having - Genevieve Shore from Penguin talkd about GoodReads and LibraryThing for example - but doesn’t really know us. The majority of the speakers were very good indeed and I think I’ll have to do a bit more brushing up tonight!

See what I do for you - nice of The Bookseller to capture me balancing Mac, phone and conference programme.

Anyway not complaining. They’re doing a grand job on the reporting and Philip Jones, the online editor, has managed to keep a jacket on longer than I. Respect.