The Philippine Online Chronicles

As digital publishing continues to flourish in the book industry, local and international publishers gathered at the UP Bahay ng Alumni on November 29 for the second day of Future of the Book 2: The Second Philippine Digital Publishing Conference.

Sponsored by the National Book Development Board, the Book Development Association of the Philippines and Vibal Foundation Inc., the nonprofit arm of educational publisher Vibal Publishing, the event aimed to discuss how book publishers cope with the era of digital publishing.

Dynamic content attracts readers

LG&M Corporation and Chikiting Books representative Dr. Lloyd Espiritu presented a study revealing the reading preferences of young people at present.

Espiritu debunked the idea that younger generations read less.

“[Young people] read a lot, but they prefer shorter reading,” he said.

Espiritu, who also teaches at De La Salle University Manila, said young people opt to multi-task, or do other things while reading.

“They…prefer to view, watch, listen and interact,” he said.

In this light, Espiritu pointed out that electronic books attract young people because of their dynamic content.

Selling e-books

Aside from Espiritu, several publishers were also invited to discuss the future of the book industry in the country.

Flipreads founder Anthony de Luna and Harvey Libarnes of Hand.Interactive, Inc. tackled the selling of books in the digital era.

“Digital bookselling quickly [becomes] a mirror of traditional bookselling,” De Luna said, emphasizing that the book industry is a battle between “superstores” like Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble and independent booksellers.

Libarnes, on the other hand, focused on the rising use of mobile applications in digital bookselling.

Winnie Hung of HP and Paolo Sibal of Central Books talked about the future of print books in the digital era, stressing that digital printing nowadays helps publishers produce books based on the demand of their target market

“You don’t need to convert money into paper if you don’t need to,” Hung said.

Photos by the writer. Some rights reserved.