Bookmarks: Simon & Schuster’s bad year, Book Oven launches, and more

Sundry links from around the Web:

• Simon & Schuster’s operating profits decline by 58% for the year
• Gil Adamson featured in the Guardian
• Book Oven, a collaborative literary community run by BookCamp Toronto’s Hugh McGuire, opens its doors
• My Life in Orange author Tim Guest has died
• Ontario library applies for liquor licence (Ontario, California, that is)
• A roadmap of Amazon’s investments
• Author pulls out of lucrative movie deal, because he hates stupid actors

The lowdown on BookCamp

The inaugural BookCamp Toronto “unconference” may have been a little less “un” than intended, but it was nevertheless a valuable forum for industry insiders to mingle with writers, journalists, and other bookish types and to discuss the future of publishing in an increasingly digital environment. Attendees from Halifax to Vancouver took part in a variety of sessions, including discussions about digital rights management, open-source publishing, and the future of e-books. Traditional publishing was not ignored, either: Alana Wilcox of Coach House Books and Jack Illingworth of the Literary Press Group moderated a session on small press publishing, and author Claire Cameron and National Post blogger Ron Nurwisah teamed up with this Quillblogger to moderate a session on book reviews.

Concerns that the conference would become a victim of its own success proved unfounded. The food didn’t run out: in fact there were lunches left over, which would suggest that not everyone who signed up for the event actually appeared. Those who were there, however, were for the most part engaged and enthusiastic, and provided a number of lively moments. A few of Quillblog’s favourites:

• Raincoast’s Dan Wagstaff discussed the effect that the rise of self-publishing is having on traditional publishing. If an author doesn’t think he needs a publisher, Wagstaff argued, he probably shouldn’t be working with one in the first place. On the flip side, publishers should focus their energies on fewer titles and on a narrower, more focused list.
• The Literary Press Group’s Jack Illingworth pointed to a 40% growth in his members’ online sales over the past year, indicating that every publisher needs to be able to work in this burgeoning market.
• Mitch Joel of Twist Image suggested that authors and publishers need to focus on strategy, not tactics, when it comes to digital marketing. Best Joel quote of the day: “What does it mean if you’re on Twitter and have only three followers? It means you suck.”
• Discussing what will happen when “every book is connected to everyone,” Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, suggested that the “networked” book of the future will be less “preened and pruned” than conventionally published books and aimed more at creating discussions online. When one audience member questioned whether traditional publishers could survive in such a brave new digital world, the Association of Canadian Publishers’ Carolyn Wood stepped into the fray, asserting that publishers are indeed experimenting with new business models. “We want to find new readers, too,” she said, “we just need to get paid for what we do.”

Mark Bertils has a roundup of links from the day, including a link to the seemingly endless Twitter feed.

UPDATE: This post contains material that has been corrected. Peter Brantley is the director of the Internet Archive. Quillblog regrets the error.

BookCamp reveals inaugural lineup

The lineup for the inaugural BookCamp Toronto gathering, which will take place on June 6 at the University of Toronto’s iSchool, has been announced. Speakers include a mix of industry insiders – such as BookNet Canada CEO Michael Tamblyn, Random House of Canada director of online sales and marketing Lisa Charters, and Q&Q‘s own Steven Beattie – as well as presenters with backgrounds in technology, Web games, and graphic design. The scheduled talks will cover everything from open-source publishing to Web marketing to the “evolving ecology of the book.”

While the lineup looks promising, the event does seem to be something of a victim of its own popularity. Initially billed as an informal “unconference,” in which there would be no official speakers and participants would set their own agendas, BookCamp has since ballooned to attract nearly 300 registered participants. As a result, only one out of five time-slots is being set aside for open discussion.

Proofreading the public domain

At last month’s BookNet Canada technology forum, one memorable moment came during a talk by Montrealer Hugh McGuire, one of the co-organizers of BookCamp Toronto and the founder of LibriVox, an online repository of free, public domain audiobooks. McGuire had just finished sharing his thoughts on time, love, and the power of open source technology, when one audience member asked – rather petulantly – what, exactly, McGuire did to make a living. His response, if this Quillblogger recalls correctly, referred to The Book Oven, McGuire’s latest online startup, which has the stated goal of helping “more people make more books.” On Thursday, The Book Oven launched its first application, which aims at correcting typos in texts uploaded to Project Gutenberg.

Bite-Size Edits is a collaborative proofreading application that McGuire describes as either “a word-based online game” or “a massive — yet productive — time waster.” Here’s how it works: Instead of presenting volunteer proofreaders with long passages drawn from public domain texts, the program selects short, one-sentence snippets, along with the surrounding lines for context. Users read the snippet and then either approve it as is or suggest changes. According to technology blogger Suw Charman-Anderson, one of the principals involved with BookOven, “If our calculations are correct, it will take 100 people just 10 minutes to proofread a 100,000 word book, and we want to bring that collaborative power to bear on on the public domain.”

The application is still in the private, alpha phase, so to sign up, you need to have a valid invitation code (posted here, here, and here). Upon first use, the Book-Size Edits module seems clean, easy to use, and indeed, surprisingly addictive. (So far, about 1,600 individual snippets have been evaluated from public domain texts.) One conspicuous thing that’s missing, however, is an easy-to-access style guide that the proofers can refer to. Copy-editing, after all, can be a subjective art.