TOC Conference just around the corner

On the Radar backchannel today, Make's Phil Torrone shared a link about how author Paulo Coelho has "pirated" his own book using file sharing, with surprising results:

[U]ploading the Russian translation of “The Alchemist” made his sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a million and more.

The use of technology like digitization, file sharing, the Internet is contributing to dramatic changes happening to the business of publishing. We launched the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference last year (video on blip) to help publishers -- ourselves included -- begin to make sense of these changes. The name TOC (which publishing folks may recognize as the common acronym for a table of contents) was a nod to our intention to see the conference set the agenda for the future of publishing. We couldn't have said it better than TOC speaker Kirk Biglione:

TOC has emerged as the premier conference (possibly the only conference) designed to help book publishers come to terms with the range of technologies that are transforming their industry.

The second TOC conference is now barely two weeks away. You can preview the schedule and tutorials at the conference web site. This year's program includes several audience favorites from last year (including guaranteed profitability in publishing, hot new gadgets, and SEO (search engine optimization for publishers), and I'm thrilled about all of the new additions and speakers, including Seth Godin, Publishers Weekly editor-in-chief Sara Nelson, and Lulu.com founder Bob Young.

As a Radar reader, you can get a 20% discount when you register using discount code toc08rdr. TOC 2008 is Feb. 11-13 in New York City.

P.S. -- We're closing day two of the conference with another crowd favorite, a panel discussion with a group of teens. If you know any teens in the New York area interested in participating, drop me a line at toc AT oreilly.com