The Digital Revolution in Children's Publishing. In March, Anna Quindlen wrote in Newsweek, "Well, what is a book, really? Is it its body, or its soul? " Publishers of all stripes are struggling with that definition, including children's publishers. Picture books have used artwork as a core part of their storytelling as long as the art form as existed, yet they have always evolved, too. "The printed book hasn't stayed static—look how popular graphic novels are with kids," says Eliza Dresang, the Beverly Cleary professor for children and youth services at the University of Washington and author of Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age. "Things aren't the same, and they never will be.
" Although children's book publishers are pretty confident in the long-term survival of printed books for children—"Children are still going to have a bookshelf," says Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children's Books—they are far from ignoring the elephant in the room. Print & E: Room for Both? Improving on Traditional Books. For Newspapers, the Future Is Now: Digital Must Be First: Tech News «
As newspapers everywhere struggle to stay afloat and remake themselves for a web-based world, many continue to debate how much emphasis they should put on digital vs. their traditional print operations. John Paton, CEO of the Journal Register group of newspapers, says the time for debate is over. Newspapers need to be digital first in everything they do, he says, and more than that, they need to take the same approach to their businesses that many web-based startups have, and that means being transparent, crowdsourced, collaborative and flat. There’s no question; it’s an inspiring message, but will anyone listen? In a speech he delivered Thursday at the Transformation of News Summit in Cambridge, Mass. We are getting out of anything that does not fall into our core competencies of content creation and the selling of our audience to advertisers.
Get rid of the bricks and iron [and] focus on core competencies — meaning, get rid of those things that don’t add value to the business.