Legacy publishing is not a thing. Sorry, maybe it’s this thing. But in the context of the publishing industry, supplanting the word ‘house’ or ‘printed’ for ‘legacy’ is used as a tool only to insult mainstream publishing and assist the few who are benefiting from this false dichotomy (thanks, university degree) of publishing houses vs author.

This meaningless phrase is used as meaningless phrases are: to cover holes in our understanding of things. In this case it is being used to describe a gap in our understanding of digital publishing. In our rush to seem up-to-date and not go the way of the music industry, we create such labels and then throw them around in order to draw a line between ourselves and them. Those others. Those morons with old ideas. Those… Saruman-like dictators of culture.

…and also having content.

If you’re working in publishing or working on a novel and you don’t know what SEO means then you probably consider growing a beard and learning to knit because I’ve heard it gets really cold in caves during the winter.  And if you do know what it is, why aren’t you doing it properly?

Following the success of our inaugural #BMHour on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, we decided to do it again. And lo, like Icarus, our wings did melt, so near the sun did we fly. By which I mean not as many people logged onto Twitter around  6.30pm last night as did last time, which I’m sure is a fairly accurate translation from the original Greek. Anyway, there was still some degree of conversation, and this time the topic to kick it all off was ‘How can we add value to digital editions of books and still sell printed material?’ As before, a digest of the main talking points follows.

Alex Painter, Marketing and Development Director at Editorial Training, discusses editorial standards and gives some tips – if you’re also a stickler for detail, make sure you read right through to the end…

The BEBC is Britain’s largest specialist English Language Teaching bookseller. Here, John Walsh, Managing Director shares  all… from the days of the Net Book Agreement, to the more recent threats from Amazon…

Are we obsessed with going digital as a nation, as publishers or is it just me? Everyday I read the bookseller, follow my twitter feeds and browse eagerly, looking for further verification that the book has no future.

As someone who sells books, this obsession was starting to worry me a bit. Should we all abandon our jobs in the book trade and get on the digital band wagon? I started to look at my friends working in digital media and think they are ‘lucky’ to be in-the-know and at the forefront of the revolution.

And then it suddenly occurred to me that there are millions of us still working in the book trade, still sat in meetings discussing the cover, the page count and the trim size. So why is no one fighting for the life of the book and the jobs of authors, publishers and booksellers? (think civil rights movements!) Surely we can do more to keep the book alive.

I spent a few hours wondering around F***** (could have been any of the large chains) the other day, browsing the shelves and dreaming of having enough time to read all the books on display. However, I did get the impression that there was a lot of ‘space’, that the shelves weren’t bustling with choice of content (as you might find online). And what about customer reviews? Amazon has proven that what really pushes a consumer to buy – is reading a non-branded customer review. Where are the in-store forums? Surely bookshops should be inviting people in for copious amounts of alcohol and a place to air their views – now that’s something that the Internet can’t offer!

Despite the digital hype, publishers are still producing books. We are trying our hardest to keep hold of the versatile, tactile element of owning a book and the pride so many of us hold in the visual array of titles on our bookshelves.

So before we all get pushed out of our day jobs, into the unknown; why don’t booksellers look at their shelves and use the Internet as a model of how to market our brands. We could use the offline advantage of being able to browse the shelves, talk about books we’ve read whilst having a drink. How where’s the harm in that?