SXSW Interactive: New Think for Old Publishers

Online innovators Clay Shirky and Deborah Schultz wanted to help jump-start their old-media book-publishing brethern with fresh ideas for their industry in the "New Think for Old Publishers" panel at South by Southwest Interactive.

But the audience grew restless through the first half of Sunday's panel as the panelists' background and setup wore on. "We're here to learn about what you want," they said, but questions and input from the crowd didn't begin until some 36 minutes into the hour-long session.

Once they did, however, the passion of the book lovers shone through and the ideas and suggestions flowed. Kevin Smokler of BookTour.com pleaded with the panel, which included Ivan Held, president of GP Putnam's Sons; Peter Miller, publicity director of Bloomsbury; and John Fagan, marketing director of Penguin Group, to "help us cheerlead about books. Help us say nice things about your book. Give us access: to authors, to excerpts of more than 1,000 words, to those things we want."

Shirky deftly pulled out the most salient points from among the roar of the crowd. First setting the scene with the quote, "The internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing ever assembled in history -- now what?" and later talking about "search versus serendipity."

Finding stuff you didn't know you were looking for is still a hard problem," said Shirky, whose latest book is Here Comes Everybody. "There have to be serendipitous methods of letting people know something they'd like to read exists."