Like the clans gathering for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, the houses came together in New York on March 13 for the annual meeting of the Association of American Publishers. The audience at the McGraw-Hill auditorium on Sixth Avenue heard the book business’s near-term future likened to the music industry’s recent past, and they were told that “democracy, the economy and intellectual progress are unsustainable without the publishing industry.”
In the room was Jeremy Greenfield, editorial director for F+W Media’s digitalbookworld.com. As Greenfield describes for CCC’s Chris Kenneally, the assembled crowd – including senior executives from Disney Publishing, HarperCollins and Macmillan – appreciated the supportive remarks from Maria Pallante, register of copyrights at the U.S. Copyright Office, even as she reminded them that, “Copyright allows publishers to take risks that would otherwise be impossible. [But] lawyers in D.C. know the difference between copyright owners who lose money because of piracy and publishers who lose money because of risk.”
Recent additions to the DBW Web site, Greenfield also noted, include an “experts publishing blog” that features Jeff Rivera’s interview with Seth Godin. “When anyone can publish an ebook, anyone will,” said Godin.
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