Publishers have always been on the forefront of technology but run the risk of falling behind, according to Michael Bhaskar, digital publishing director at Profile Books.
Bhaskar was part of a panel discussion at the Footnote Summit in Cape Town, South Africa today.
“There is this perception out there that book publishers are not very au fait with technology. That book publishers don’t really get technology,” said Bhaskar, an idea he said is historically inaccurate.
“Publishers haven’t just been on the cutting edge of technology, they’ve been the ones investing the technology,” he said.
He highlighted the technologies created around printing and papermaking.
“You can look at it in the Gutenberg Press, you can look at it in steam presses, you can look at it in warehousing and the technology in moving automated goods around,” Bhaskar said.
He said the reason for this is publishers need to be agile, constantly looking at numerous products, but the industry is currently in danger of falling behind.
“That danger is not that the tools don’t exist, it is just the internal resistance to you using them,” he said, with the biggest danger that publishers forget they have been at the forefront of technology.
According to Bhaskar data analytics tools are some of the most valuable to publishers in the digital age.
“It essentially shows in much greater detail what your sales are, where they are going and why.”
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
