Description:

For former literary agent Joe Regal, the current ebook ecosystem is missing a few things. Chief among them, a centralized, online platform for all stakeholders in the book and publishing community to participate in the discussion (and commerce) around ebooks. Regal's attempt to provide such a platform is ZolaBooks - an ebook retailer designed to benefit everyone who involved in the conversation around books - readers, curators, authors, bookstores and publishers.

Join Regal (Zola's CEO) for a guided tour of ZolaBooks, and a discussion about the ebook landscape - including Zola's "open" approach, DRM, the disintermediative nature of the current dominant ebook retailers, the impact of the DoJ's ruilng on competition in the ebook space, the importance of curation that marries the best of human know-how and algorithms, and much much more.

We'll leave plenty of time for audience questions, so come prepared to participate in what is sure to be a compelling discussion.

About Joe Regal

Joe Regal has spent more than two decades in publishing, starting at the Russell & Volkening Literary Agency, where he worked with Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Anne Tyler, Eudora Welty, and Annie Dillard, as well as Nobel Prize-winner Nadine Gordimer. He founded his own agency, Regal Literary, in 2002; there he represented books as diverse as Big Fish, The Time Traveler's Wife, Shantaram, The Master and Margarita, Scott Pilgrim,The Tao of Wu, and The Traveler. He co-founded Zola Books in 2011 as the first truly integrated social eBook retailer, creating an alternative ecosystem that empowers writers, publishers, independent booksellers, and curators. Zola is an open-platform retailer that carries books from most major publishers and makes them available on all web-enabled devices, including the Nook, iPad, Kobo, and yes, most Kindles.

About Kat Meyer (O'Reilly Media/TOC)

Currently TOC Chair and Community Manager, Kat Meyer is a book publishing industry veteran whose background includes 20 years of editorial and marketing experience working for regional and national trade and academic publishers, including: HMH, Communication Skill Builders, the University of Arizona Press, Rio Nuevo Publishers, and many others.

Prior to joining O'Reilly, Kat acted as Chief Content Wrangler for her company, Next Chapter Communications, where she revels in two of her favorite past times: all things bookish, and all things social media. Among her clients at NCC have been: SourceBooks, NetGalley, AllRomanceE/OmniLit, Adaptive Blue, the University of Arizona Press, Poisoned Pen Press, BookSwim, and a little company called O'Reilly media!