The Festival’s mission is to serve as a too-rare confluence of authors, readers, librarians and publishers, all coming together to demonstrate the art of content creation, and the too-secret science of content curation.
The Festival’s first half-day will feature the so-called Bookfeast, where a new digital imprint, the Library Partners Press, will be officially “launched.” Throughout the Bookfeast, newly published independent authors will be reading from their selected works. Any and all interested book-lovers are invited to attend the Bookfeast, to learn about the LP Press, to hear some unique voices, and to discover (and maybe feast upon) some newly published books.
A (mock) Rock Opera is planned for that Thursday evening, with the festival moving to a downtown venue.
On Friday, the Freakout will featuring traditional panels, presentations, breakouts and important keynotes from nationally-known speakers and innovators, including:
Katherine Skinner, of Educopia, who will address how “…for centuries, memory organizations have dependably acquired, provided access to and preserved print books for future researchers, but now that books have transitioned from print-only to multimedia, many of those preservation relationships and workflows need to be re-assessed”; and
Mitchell Davis, of Bibliolabs, who will discuss how “…there are always consequences to every technology, and in the case of publishing, the consequence has been a flood of new books that no one can keep up with.” Mitchell will describe and demonstrate Library Journal’s Self-E publishing program, designed to enable authors the chance to shift their risk profile when independently publishing ebooks.
Steve Kelley, of ZSR and NASIG fame, who will describe how, if we think about it, electronic serials and electronic books were very likely separated at birth, especially insofar as the handling and management of their formerly print formats is concerned.
Digital Publishing @ Wake will be hosting its inaugural Wake the Ebooks Festival on April 23-24, 2015.