Pete’s talk for the Society of Authors, London
It was a great pleasure to go down to London last month and deliver a talk for the Society of authors. The talk was entitled: Challenge and Change in Educational Publishing.
The audience were mainly in the area of educational publishing, and what was lovely for me personally was the number of attendees whom I knew from the world of ELT. (Long time since I’ve typed ‘whom’).
The talk was focussed on: Blended Learning, relevant types of technology (such as blogs and e-book readers), and the challenges facing publishers and authors. This is such a time of change that it was highly relevant to consider how publishers make money from digital (some clearly do!) and how authors will be remunerated in the future.
The talk raised many issues, but as we are in the middle of this paradigm shift, it’s probably fair to say that concrete answers are still ‘blowin’ in the wind’. How we view the future comes, like so much in digital, to one’s beliefs and attitudes about tech developments. There will always be both good and bad, as eloquently argued by musician David Byrne in a recent e-mail to fans, extolling the positives of the e-mail and lamenting the demise of print….
Many thanks to the organisers for inviting me to speak at this post-AGM event. Please feel free to download an 11-page Handout of the PowerPoint of the talk. plenary