The technology changes, but there is a constant in electronic publishing, and Milia, the annual pre-spring fair in Cannes, has learned how to exploit it. The Reed Midem group now subtitles its baby "The World's Interactive Content Marketplace." "What remains the same is content, and content belongs to publishers," explained Milia director Laurine Garaude. "Harry Potter begins as a book and winds up as a game. This is where we come in."
At the ninth Milia, held February 4 8 and preceded by a two-day seminar program called Think Tank Summit, she was quickly proved right. In the center of the exhibition floor was the buzzing booth of content provider Scholastic, Harry Potter's American publisher. Aleen Stein, in charge of international licensing of software at Scholastic, said, "Milia is the best show we have for doing real business. More of our foreign licensees come here than to any other event." And she does cover quite a number of events, finding some of her customers at E-3, but not at the conventional fairs. "Only book people go to the big book fairs."
Stein has been a charter exhibitor at Milia as cofounder with ex-husband Robert of the pioneer electronic publisher The Voyager Company.
This year, Stein was part of a team of four, with David Fratto, in charge of Scholastic software development. She herself was selling out of an impressive Software Foreign Rights Guide, which featured stories and characters from the Scholastic book catalogue, in addition to electronic originals. Fratto was scouting the aisles, looking for possible "convergence" with interactive TV, wireless applications, whatever. Milia had them all.
Visitors to the Scholastic stand included "delegation after delegation" of mainland Chinese "definitely shopping," as Stein put it. From her vantage point, the show seemed a gathering place of emerging markets, with Second and Third Worlds buying from the First. Yet she was aware of the falling off of the U.S. presence, for which e-book disappointments shared responsibility with September 11. True, Americans are never very interested in looking at what the rest of the world is doing, "but they didn't even come over to sell."
Many of the show's major players were present without stands, preferring to enroll as "participants," a pricey alternative that came with a catalogue listing, a personal message box, access to network information and a private lounge, meeting area and bar. Even a publisher as big as Hachette preferred to field a team of six working out of its mailbox.
PW called at the stand of France's Gallimard group another charter member of Milia and another Harry Potter publisher. Here Gallimard Jeunesse publisher Hedwige Pasquet, who is also president of Gallimard's joint venture in electronic publishing with the Bayard mass market children's book and press group, explained that while each partner to this alliance continues to publish its own catalogue of traditional children's books even its own CD-ROM adaptations of successful print-book series and characters they have pooled resources to face the challenges of newer technologies.
The "Second Medium"
Pasquet compared the American strategy of doing print, audio and e-books simultaneously and promoting them together to the French way books first, then (for the younger age groups) CD-ROMs. Electronic books when France is ready for them will be published for older children. But the first step will always be books. This publisher doesn't put down e-books, but they'll have to be the "second medium."
Games are very much part of Milia now a function of its ability to change skins. Hardly anyone remembers that Milia is actually the French acronym for International Market for Illustrated and Art Books, which seemed like a good idea a year or so before the fair was actually launched in 1994 by which time CD-ROM was the way to go. Online quickly took over, and now the watchword is interactivity or rather interactive content, the guiding principle in all new media channels, whether for leisure time or school and professional training. Most often, especially when it's good, everything begins with books.
That seemed just right to Ernst Klett Verlag, founded in 1897, a market leader in German educational publishing that in the latest generation has also become a major upscale trade imprint under the logo Klett Cotta. Now Klett is also the country's number one in educational materials, from the earliest grades up to and including adult education and corporate training.
Selling Licenses
On the busy Klett stand, Amadeus Gerlach, in charge of the Stuttgart-based group's business development, pointed out that Klett is here to sell licenses for its electronic publishing list to the rest of Europe, including Eastern Europe but also to customers in countries as far away as China. Its video games amuse a little and scare a little on the way to teaching the basics of chemistry, physics and biology. Gerlach is convinced that it is essential to offer content on "different platforms" in this way, at least until the ideal platform is found.
Emily Nagle Green, managing director of Forrester Research for North America, a keynote speaker and one of the organizers of the Think Tank Summit, was not at all sure that the new technologies born of games would be of use to all book publishers; most will find investment costs too great. Although Forrester has been a pioneer in electronic research, its experts have been negative about e-books (especially those that run on dedicated devices).
For the time being, she added, the new media are moving faster than the people who are trying to keep up with them. Even trade shows rise and fall with changing technologies. Milia may actually be the only international fair that attempts to stay ahead of developments, not contenting itself with finished products.
