It’s a tradition for me that when I go to a conference, I start a list of the most common terms heard and begin pondering how much to drink for each one. So, here it is, the Digital Book World 2011 Drinking Game!
Form factor – 2 sips
Are you ready for what happens next? – 1 sip
Digital transition – 1 sip
Transmedia – CHUG. Get a refill. Drink that. In fact, drink until you’d swear your radio is dressed up like your HD TV.
Vertically oriented – 2 sips
Verticals – 1 sip
@TomThompson: #dbw11 CEO metaphors: we’re in a storm, a tsunami, at a fork in the road, fundamental sea change
Sea change – 3 sips
Storm – 2 sips
Tsunami – 1 sip
Fork in the road – 4 sips
Mention of any weather system precipitation not actually happening outside – 3 sips
Mention of any weather system precipitation not actually happening outside along with mention of roadway cutlery – CHUG.
Borders (as in bookstore) – 3 sips
Borders as in boundary – 5 sips
Mention of Microsoft getting into ebooks – Look confused, possibly drunk.
Gold rush – 3 sips
References to music business – 1 sip
Lessons publishing can learn from music: drink a lot, you’ll need it. You learned nothing, so just get drunk.
Content is king – 3 sips
Publisher is curator – 2 sips
Brand/Branding – 2 sips
Digital Cloud – 2 sips
Soup to nuts – Take a big drink
Normalize – 4 sips
Downstream data – 1 sip
Cloud computing – 4 sips
Mention of clouds having nothing to do with precipitation – 5 sips
Metadata – 3 sips
“Metadata” in same sentence as “marketing” – 3 sips
Curation – 5 sips
Rubric – 3 sips
Mastering social media – 2 sips
Mastering digital media – 2 sips
Mastering digital marketing in the traditional sense – Drink until that makes more sense when you really think about it.
Mastering 1 to 1 marketing – 1 sip for each of you
Mastering marketing – 1 sip
Skill set – 2 sips
Evolving/evolution – 2 sips
Ecosystem – 2 sips
Pie in the sky – 2 sips
Mention of pie – 3 sips
Pie chart – 4 sips
ACTUAL PIE – get a drink to go with it
Mention of Twitter, Facebook – 2 sip
Mention of Foursquare – Buy yourself a bar and drink it dry (would you believe there wasn’t one mention of Foursquare?!)
Innovation – 3 sips
“Free isn’t a business model” – drink until you’re a sloppy weeping drunk
“Free books seed sales” – drink until you’re happy in your pants
Mention of romance genre – 2 sips
Mention of major bestseller – 2 sips
Mention of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – no drink for you! Too many! I need my liver.
And there you have a sampling of the most common terms heard at DBW11. In two weeks, I will be at Tools of Change, where I’m sure more drinking possibilities will be found. Woo hoo!
What I want to hear someone say is how the phenomenal success of Stieg Larrson, who has been dead for 6 years, can be attributed to his mastery of social media. Schmoozing from beyond the grave is the new Facebook.
Summary of elements proven to create a bestselling author: FAIRIES!
LOL! That was fun. I feel slightly drunk plus chilled from conference sitting in too cold rooms just reading it.
So did any of the CEOs admit that they don’t have a clue how they are going to survive the next decade?
My word “hope46” seems strangely appropriate.
I really think they are trying to strike a very tricky balance between figuring out what of the “way we’ve always done it” is worth preserving while also figuring out which of the new technologies and options to embrace first and lastingly.
I do wish there were more practice of the community building being espoused, particularly when it comes to library lending from Macmillan, for example. Some like Harlequin and Avon, are SO GOOD at being interested in their readership, and then there’s that Macmillan decision about ebook lending that makes me bang my head on hard surfaces.
Isn’t it strange that MacMillan is holding out over this library thing, but it seems like neither they nor any other publishers were ever concerned about the used book business, which I’m sure gobbled up as many if not more sales than library lending. What’s the difference, really? Someone had to buy the book one time (reader or library) and off it went again and again, making money in the used-book case. And there had to be money in it or there wouldn’t have been so many cubbyhole stores. Publishers didn’t care about that, or even seem to acknowledge the business existed.
At least libraries have an altruistic motive, to make books available to all readers.
OK, I must admit to some confusion. I hit a wall when reading, “any weather system precipitation not actually happening outside along with mention of roadway cutlery.” After searching for “roadway cutlery,” and being told that it’s plastic, I’m still unenlightened.
Please tell me what could possibly involve precipitation and plastic cutlery!?
Probably referring to something like “The tsunami of new publishing options brings us to a fork in the road…”
Although I would really really like to think it was “All hail e-books! Let’s go spoon in a ditch!”
I was thinking of “sporks,” and really REALLY wondering.
This is so much more useful than a word cloud.
Ah, that one deserves a toast and it’s own personal bottle!
Too true, I feel a (GOOD) free book often demands that I pimp more enthusiastically!
I think – therefore I could be wrong – that the problem with the publishing industry is that those that might know how to bring it into the 21st century are fighting a ceiling not only made of glass and solid defense/defensive lines but of ignorance.
What’s wrong (and man oh man do I want publishers to survive) is almost everything in terms of moving quickly into the 21st century and working in and around a wonky economy. As you say, Harlequin gets it. Their ebooks, their percent-off sales, their bundles, the new sub-genres they try, everything they do is directed at getting customers and keeping them.
How can you argue with people who can’t understand that when a library buys a book it’s a book that has been sold. Argh.
I think if someone proposed the idea of a public library today the publishers would claim it was totally illegal, immoral, anti-free market, anti-American (cause we’re all about making as much money as we can any way we can get away with), and would mean the end of publishing as we know it. Authors would be begging on the street and all dissemination of knowledge would cease. Then, they’d bring out the tar and feathers. Run, Benjamin Franklin, run!
I suspect that’s true. Indeed, if I may make the point as a non-American, your society was actually founded on liberal, progressive, egalitarian Enlightenment principles that some present-day Americans would probably call ‘un-American’!
🙂
@AgTigress
I like you! Let’s do drinks. 🙂
Wow. Thash a lotta rulesh (hic)… Did anyone make it through the conference, er, upright (nudge nudge wink wink)?
I think this all would have gone more smoothly if they’d stuck to serving drinks with pie. Mmmm…pie.
I saw the tweets where the Google book exec was shocked that romance was the best selling category. Where the hell have they been for the past 10 years?
Although I would really really like to think it was “All hail e-books! Let’s go spoon in a ditch!”
LMAO!!
“Spoon in a ditch” is making me laugh so hard I have tears. TEARS.
I’m so saying that to Hubby when he gets home, just for the lulz. Let’s go spoon in a ditch!
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