To summarize, SXSW draws more than 50,000 hipsters devoted to making great new and innovative experiences. There are all kinds of sessions and talks, some with very famous people, some with emerging startups, and some with regular people who just have something interesting to say. I was there for four days, and tried to go to as many sessions as I could. I also tried to eat from as many food trucks as humanly possible.

Overall, it was amazing to be around so many people who have a genuine love for creating compelling and innovative experiences. I’ve always thought that conferences are worth it if you come away with either one great idea or one good friend, and in that, I was successful.

But as it turns out, Disney World is an appropriate analogy.  I felt like someone who waited to visit the Magical Kingdom just a little too long, then realized that Cinderella is just a cute girl in a dress. Mainly, I already knew most of what the panels were discussing. Outside of the sessions, on the streets and throughout the convention center, there was a ton of what is known in Vegas as “smut smack.” Basically, as you walked around, you were bombarded with people throwing advertising cards at you (technology smut, in this case). Everywhere. About everything. Everyone was dressed up in ridiculous costumes with who knows what logos on them. The entire town was about pushing brands more than it was about learning how to push brands. It’s a slight distinction, but an important one.

So the librarian/student in me emerged as I quickly realized that the value here was the book talks – among what was often 30+ session options per hour.  I ended up going to almost every author lecture (regardless of topic or speaker) because those were the speakers who had done the most research, knew their points, were clear, and were the most interesting. And in the end, this was where I learned the most that I could apply to my job. I came home with a suitcase heavy with signed copies of books I can’t wait to read, including Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit. Once a librarian, always a librarian.

I walked away knowing that someday I’d like to be one of the book presenters, and that that reality isn’t too far away. It was worth it.

I am not foolish enough or naïve enough to think that in today’s market, a company can have a profitable future in selling just books. Nor am I a traditionalist when it comes to reading. But what I do believe in is a strong, clear mission statement and business strategy. “Selling things” is not a business strategy. “Copying Amazon” is not a business strategy.

Interestingly enough, this morning, MSNBC was talking about Fortune’s naming of Howard Schultz as Business Person of the Year. They pointed out that he stopped Starbucks from doing this very thing: trying to be too many things, grasping at any low-hanging fruit that might make money. He gave them focus, and that is what makes them successful. That said, I am fine with working for a company that sells books, and I am ok with working for a company that does other things. But I want to be somewhere that knows who it is and what its product is, whether or not it’s books.

So as of today, I’ve gone back to the interactive agency world – which is, honestly, a bit more my speed. I am still specializing in content, which though not specifically books, is a kissing cousin. Yet I am a librarian and reader at heart, and I still care passionately about the user experience of the book, whether or not it’s my primary source of employment.

Similarly, the early leaks/reviews of the new Amazon tablet are making fun of how they ripped off the hardware, didn’t consult the Kindle team, blah blah. Coworkers watching the Engadget liveblog with me seemed unimpressed. But I disagree.

I think that like Apple, Amazon is too smart and savvy to release a sub-par, ripped-off tablet. Yes, they need a tablet on the market, but that’s not enough of a motivator for them; there’s something else. I’m not exactly sure what it is yet… It might be Amazon Silk, or it might be a long-term plan for their movie/music streaming strategy.

But there is, for sure, something else…

Netflix had very little to say – well, to accurately say – about what I should watch. Granted, all they had to go on was my rental of Friday Night Lights, a movie about lesbian acrobats, and the ratings I’d added when I joined (some of movies I’d watched a decade ago). I thought, “I should just call Carrie and see what she’s watched and liked recently.” Why? Because Carrie always knows what I will love: we are both part of the same generation, have grad degrees, read the Sunday Times, live in an urban area, and read voraciously. Her recommendations aren’t based on what I’ve bought in the past, but an understanding of my persona.

Persona recommendations are so much more useful than last purchase recommendations. Haven’t most of us bought something for a friend’s baby on Amazon, only to get bombarded with stroller recommendations? On BN.com, recommendations are based on last purchase, so if you last read The Hunger Games, you’re sure to love Vampire Academy – even if you’re a 30 year-old guy.

But what if purchase history was a much smaller part of a holistic formula? I look at my Goodreads feed, and so many of my friends’ books overlap with mine – friends that aren’t that different from Carrie and me. Yes, I like cooking murder mysteries more than most, and Amy tends to read more theory, but 80%(ish) of what we love is similar. What would happen to B&N’s recommendations if instead of saying, “She liked Hunger Games,” they said, “She is a professional, Gen-Xer, urbanite, etc., etc.”?

What I did like about Netflix is how they asked questions about what I liked, and yes, that’s a start. But they didn’t ask much about who I am – and who I am determines what I like, not the other way around. Ultimately, book recommendations (actually, any ecommerce recommendations) would be more powerful if they looked at an entire persona, not just last purchase.

Carrie, thank you for the Portlandia recommendation.

Though I obviously spend a lot of time on book sites in general, this gave me a chance to do an in-depth analysis, and to articulate my ideal of an ecommerce book experience. Here’s what it boiled down to:

1. I can’t understand why the major booksellers – Amazon, BN, etc. – insist on having separate landing pages for print books and ebooks. Yes, I get why there needs to be an educational page talking about the device and the experience of reading digitally, but having similar merchandising pages for similar merchandise is redundant and confusing for the user. Talk about the books that matter, then offer purchasing options for whatever format is available.

2. There needs to be more compelling conversation. When I buy a rice cooker, all I need is a few reviews and a price – it’s not an emotional investment. But people want to feel connected to books, to others that read, and to the authors. Splash pages with lots of covers and bestselling lists just aren’t enough for this type of product.

3. Editorial POV matters. In user testing, avid readers often talk about how they trust the staff at bookstores more than flashy marketing pages – they feel that store staff make recommendations more honestly, and that it’s difficult to know if online recs are due to deals with publishers or excess inventory. They want to feel like they are getting real reader’s advisory from people who know books.

I know that eventually, digital and print will live more harmoniously, and that right now it’s just a matter of time and adoption rates. But creating an experience that encompasses the above will expedite that adoption – showing readers that books are books no matter what the format.

I’d like to say that I chose digital because I knew where the future was headed, and certainly, that’s why I developed that skill set while I was at the BPL. But honestly, I wasn’t so prophetic back then. I was young and poor, and I simply applied for every librarian job in New York, London, Boston, and San Francisco. I almost took a job at Google Books, but they refused to pay for my relocation expenses. I almost took a job at some creepy independent bookstore, until I realized they wanted me to stalk people for their matchmaking service. I ended up in NYC, in digital, because People magazine needed someone that knew both metadata and the names of Britney Spears’ kids.

As the years have floated by, I’ve created a career that intertwines the book experience and the interactive experience: sometimes I focus on them separately, sometimes together. It’s a niche, but one that I love. Yet it doesn’t take a professional strategist to see that the book industry is shrinking. It’s not shrinking because books are going online – I consider reading an ebook just as valid as reading a print book. No, the book industry is shrinking because people are too distracted playing Angry Birds and watching videos of double rainbows. More time on digital snacking, less time on reading. Places like Barnes & Noble are adapting by selling Harry Potter wands and, of course, Angry Birds.

Despite being an early adopter and in love with digital innovation, I am depressed that people aren’t reading very much anymore, and depressed that B&N is going to start selling faucets. I don’t know what this all means yet (either for the industry or my career) and there isn’t the usual unicorn-y epiphany at the end of this blog. I just want someone, anyone, to own the reading experience – and that’s why now, all these years later, I still choose this life.

How many choices does a reader need for a copy of Ulysses? What’s the difference? Before ebooks, making that choice was easier because you could see the cover, weigh the book, make decisions based on a more intimate view of the product.

This got a little more unwieldy when ebooks first emerged, but overall, all the options were still ok – not unlike the toothpaste. (You know that if it has ADA approval, it can’t be all that bad.) So at first, I knew that any ebook I bought would be close to what I wanted and would get the job done.

Now, I’m not so sure. With the rise of self-publishing, too many people are scanning bad copies of random books – both legally and illegally. Scammers are taking popular books and publishing “guides” that look like the actual books. Content farms are publishing complete trash, documents full of high-profile phrases, then selling them for $.99; users get taken, but don’t think the low price is worth the hassle of a fight. And since there isn’t a book-industry equivalent of the ADA, how can the consumer know the difference?

Below, a search for “Ulysses” was done on the new Nook,  assuming that someone searching for that wants the actual copy of Ulysses written by James Joyce – this should be an easy result. So, which one is that? Why would someone pay $12.99 when there are copies available for $.99? What’s the difference between the books shown?

Here are the results on the Kindle. It doesn’t seem to have the same problems with the self-published books rising to the top, so they must be weighting verified publishers (or at least better copies) more heavily.

Yet neither device indicates which is from a commercial publisher and which is from the self-publishing platform. This is fine when it’s Amanda Hocking, but what about when it’s some jerk publishing a fake Harry Potter with the same sentence written over and over a million times?

There isn’t one solution to helping consumers find and choose the products they actually want. This is going to take a combination of content verification (which is VERY different from censorship), tagging, tweaking of the search algorithm, and editorial curation. Otherwise, it’s going to become impossible to find – or choose – anything.

[UPDATE: Here's a more in-depth and technical article about this from Reuters.]

My life isn’t quite as demanding as that woman’s; though I work full time and go to school full time, I have few other obligations, and am lucky to have so much luxurious free time my life. That said, being in a doctoral program is still a constant albatross – there is always something I should be doing. This semester, particularly, wasn’t so fun as I struggled my way through a level of statistics that no human should ever have to understand.

As stats hung over my head the last few months, I thought about that woman, and next thing I knew, I was hitting “Add to Cart” for another teen vampire novel. When I should have been mastering multiple regression, I was becoming an expert on interpersonal relationships between humans and the supernatural. I started going crazy with procrastination, making plans for a concordance or some sort of online inter-novel reference book. My stats assignments piled up.

Finally, the last weekend of the semester rolled around, and I had no choice but to finish my portfolio. I wanted to poke my eyeballs out. But instead, I downloaded all three of Amanda Hocking’s Trylle series, practically salivating with excitement – yes, vampires are awesome, but it’s been a long time since anyone’s done trolls. And not just trolls, but HOT trolls. Changelings! How could I be despondent about stats when I had HOT TROLLS on the horizon?

So I made myself a deal. I would work in a cycle: two hours on my stats, then an hour on the trolls. Over and over. And so I did. For 48 hours, I was lost to everything but ridiculously complex math and a ridiculous story about changeling trolls.

Yes, I probably would have finished my classwork anyway. But a lot of people don’t, and I am already watching my classmates drop like flies. I am sure that many of them withhold books like this from themselves because the need to finish their schoolwork first or because of everything else they should be doing, and that means they could potentially go years without using their imaginations or getting lost in an indulgent story. I know better. Trylle saved me that weekend, and I can see that trashy teen supernatural romances will be my carrot on a stick.

While caged behind the Info Desk, you were a sitting duck for anyone – and by anyone, I mean crazy people mad at the government, homeless people looking to sign up for Hotmail, and lonely people looking for love from young librarians. This desk wasn’t really where I helped people find serious research; this desk was where I gave people directions to the bathroom or The Da Vinci Code.

When I left in 2006, there were no ereaders. In fact, libraries were just getting into digital audiobooks, and the BPL even had a contract with a company that was incompatible with iPods (I was not on the committee that made that decision!). Patrons would come up to us at the desk, MP3 player in hand, bewildered and overwhelmed. We tried to liken sideloading to file folders, and were met with glazed stares. They pressed buttons on the MP3 players randomly and frantically before going back to CDs.

Fast forward to today, where libraries are in the same situation with ereaders. I can imagine my former coworkers still at the desk, trying to explain to those same patrons how to download Adobe and then sideload books onto their Nook.  Most library patrons do not have the same adoption level as regular consumers – seriously, I spent an infinite amount of time walking people through how to set up email accounts.

That is why, despite the fact that B&N got to the library community first, I doubt they will be the winner, now that  Amazon is in the game.  Based on my experience at that reference desk, I think that Whispersync is going to be the not-so-secret weapon that wins over the late adopters. There is simply no way that the average library user is going to have the wherewithal to learn how to get a library book onto an ereader when it involves installing software and dragging and dropping.

Maybe I’ll do an undercover shift and test this theory for myself…

Carrie lives just a few blocks from me, so of course it makes sense for us to be able to look out for each other. But she is also a book-lover, a librarian, and a long-time New Yorker. She’s spent years going to author readings around the city, amassing an extraordinary collection of signed first editions – everything from Jonathan Franzen to Jonathan Safran Foer to Amy Bloom. So when she handed over her keys, I looked her right in the eye and said, “Your grave won’t even be cold and I will be in here whisking away your collection of signed books and covering up that space like they never existed.”

Instead of drooling in envy, I can certainly focus more on building my own collection, and I plan on going to more readings when I’m finished school. But two years from now, will I even be using print books anymore? Will I even want to buy them just for the signature?

Seriously though, I don’t want some foolish autograph book like kids get at Disney World for signatures from the characters. And I certainly don’t want to ask Murakami to sign the back of my Nook.

Perhaps a picture with an autograph is the answer? Yesterday, The New York Times profiled the iPhone app Autography,  which bascially allows you to take a picture of yourself with the author; the author then signs the photo with a stylus, and a minute later the photo is inserted into your ebook. You can, of course, also post it to FB and whatnot.

Now, bringing this back to Carrie and our mutual agreement to trade books over each other’s deathbed, I doubt either one of us would be as excited for an ereader full of pictures of the other with famous authors, no matter how much we like each other.

In the end, this new format makes the experience less about the book, and more about the reader. I am with Murakami – I do not have a signed copy of his book.

But I sure will have a shizzly FB profile.