The Definitive Digital Author’s Guide to SXSW 2012

SXSW Interactive 2012

SXSW is the premier “future of everything” conference. While not specifically a publishing conference, some sessions should not be missed for the attending author. Especially if the attending author is interested in digital publishing, where they are in control of their career as an author.

To help, I’ve compiled a list of sessions related to digital book publishing. Where the title of the session isn’t clear, I’ve added some narrative as to why it’s important. And if that doesn’t help, each are linked to the full description.

Digital Publishing Related Sessions at SXSW 2012

Friday, March 9th

• 2:00p - Making a Grand Entrance: How to Launch a Product Because launching a book is a product launch. Learn.
• 3:30p -Potterize It! Sharing the Magic of Fan Culture As in Harry Potter. Understand now?
  Unstuck: Get (and Keep) Your Creativity Flowing Because you should be writing now.
• 5:00p – Get Lit: Why Story Matters You might know more than most attendees here. Make connections. Ask smart questions.

Saturday, March 10th

• 9:30a - Rhapsody to Year 0: Music & Publishing Go Digital
  Creating The Code: A BBC Transmedia Documentary
  The Present of Print: Paper’s Persistence
  How to Be Yourself When Everyone Else Is Faking It Some authors struggle with sharing too much from their private lives.
• 11:00a – Anime: More Than Cartoons
  Making Stories: Libraries & Community Publishing
  Intellectual Property Issues in Social Media Because your content will be shared. Are you ready for that?
  ePublishing Meet Up
• 12:30p – Everything Is a Remix, so Steal Like an Artist
  The Freelance Rockstar
  The Great Library Swindle: Your Rights Are at Risk
  Rise of Analytics: Impacting the Editorial Process?
• 1:00p – A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling 
• 3:30p – How to Become a Next-Generation Media Company  Incorporating text, video, web… it’s the future.
• 3:45p – Books Win the Attention Economy
• 6:00p – Tracking Trends to Make Great Content Timely ebooks can make a mint!

Sunday, March 11th

• 9:30a - Multiplatform Storytelling: Frontline War Stories
  Publishing Models Transforming the Book
  Storytelling Beyond Words: New Forms of Journalism Books can consist of much more than just text.
• 11:00a – Discoverability and the New World of Book PR
  Mother Goose Got Punked: Next Gen Visual Stories
  140 Characters vs. 14000 Words: The New Long Form
• 3:30p – How Comedy Writers are Changing the Way We Laugh Give your readers what they want. Not funny? You can still learn.
  How to Be an Idea Factory Because you can never have enough!
  Libros digitales para todos/eBooks for Everybody
  Passion For Typography Meet Up Your mission: find your next interior designer!
• 5:00p – Reinventing the Graphic Novel for the iPad

Monday, March 12th

• 9:30a – The iPad: The Second Coming of the CD-ROM $749 ebook reader = iPad. Learn how to get content on that device.
• 3:30p – Knitting a Long Tail in Niche Publishing
• 5:00p – Self-Publishing: A Revolution for Midlist Authors?
  Snackable Content: Working in a Bite-Sized Future Smaller means more titles of yours in the marketplace.
• Tricking People into Reading Again

Tuesday, March 13th

• 9:30a – 3 Secrets to a Killer Elevator Pitch Because you need to know how to make one.
• 12:30p – Digital Age Editing: A Magazine Editor’s View Not quite the same as editing for a book, but close enough to learn some of these tricks.
• 3:30p – American Copyright: Will Government Go Too Far?
  Making eBooks Smarter: Responsive Page Design

Since they overlap, I can’t attend them all. And luckily, there’s some free time to walk the expo floor or seek out new cool talks. See you at SXSW! And if you can’t find me, check The Ginger Man. I’ll be holding court there!