To Blog or Not to Blog

Joe W. e-mailed me the slide deck for his general session keynote today. I am excited about the content that he will be delivering as I think it will cause many publishers to think differently about how they are utilizing blogs to reach the consumer. Joe is going to be discussing both in-house blogging as well as author blogging and the benefits and potential pitfalls of both. He will also address what it takes to create a successful blog (he should know).

With lots of real examples inserted throghout Joe will talk about the idea of providing free content through blogs in order to generate sales of the actual book. This should be very interesting as we all seek to navigate the waters of new content platforms and how to create strategies to utilize those platforms and still sell books!

Additionally, I talked with D'Wayne (our Events Director) today. He made a visit to the Lombard Westin yesterday and did a thorough walkthrough. This was the first time we have been able to see the finished property, as you will recall that this property is brand new. Everything appears to be in order, although looking at registration #'s for some of the sessions, it appears that we might have to use some of the hotels larger rooms for a couple of the sessions as we are seeing healthy registration. Which brings me to the question...have you registered?