Stanford Professional Publishing Course on Itunes

This past week I have been working on listening to a publishing series on the Stanford University Itunes channel. There were some extremely interesting segments discussing electronic publishing and the incorporation of new forms of media. One speaker in the video was invited to attend the course because of his expertise in digital technology. He discussed how the publishing industry needs to remain more open to change and embrace new forms of technology and new methods of distribution such as ipads, iphones, kindles, etc. Another speaker discussed the use of videos. He asserted that publication companies should embrace the technology of the video and use it to expand the industry's purpose of "storytelling." He suggested embedding youtube videos on the websites of publications, broadcasting live events relating to the publication on their website, and bringing in bloggers who have interesting insight into topics relating to the publication. Yet another speaker discussed making use of the brand-name. She asserted that publishers need to incorporate tactics used by Starbucks and Apple in generating customer loyalty. As books and publications are becoming commoditized, they too need to adopt the strategy of cultivating brand-names for themselves. I found out from the course website that it has since become the Yale Professional Publishing Course. It was an extremely interesting series of videos and I am definitely going to include some clips my website.