DAY OF CODE

Presented by Consonance
<html>
  <head>
    <title>
      Web development for the book trade
    </title>
    <meta name="audience" content="publishers and booksellers with no coding experience" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="websites, bookselling, XML, ONIX, HTML, CSS, Ruby" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <h1>
      Using skills you already have, such as:
    </h1>
    <ul>
      <li>A love of words</li>
      <li>An appetite for grammar</li>
    </ul>
    <p>Because tech is the new literacy!</p>

    <p>Brought to you:</p>
    <ul>
      <li>by publishers who code</li>
    </ul>
  </body>
</html>

2019 Day of Code

40 bookselling and publishing delegates from across the book trade, supported by ~20 coaches, built a real website on their laptop using free technology showcasing their own selection of book data provided by Nielsen. The results were showcased the following Monday at FutureBook 19, to inspire and motivate their peers.

Will there be another one?

We hope so! Follow @consonance_app on Twitter to see updates about future events.

Screenshots from the Day of Code

Why do you need to code?

  • The book industry pays too much for software

    From bookstores to publishing houses, the book business is paying too much for software because of a lack of knowledge, poor technology choices, bad website briefings, and far, far too low expectations of technology, that cost time, reputational damage, and seemingly endless customisation fees.

  • The book industry doesn’t pay enough for software

    At the same time, we are not paying enough for software: to train knowledgeable staff, to build our own solutions, or to innovate with our supply chain, our consumer-facing websites, our workflow, our data collection, our books. Software that meets needs, saves time, and makes the sale has huge value.

  • Software is eating the world

    “Software is eating the world,” said Marc Andreessen in 2011, but the book industry hasn’t moved along far enough from our mention in his article: “Perhaps the single most dramatic example of this [is when] Borders agreed to hand over its online business to Amazon under the theory that online book sales were non-strategic and unimportant.”

Publishing is hard to understand. Software is easier! It is more cost-effective to train willing book industry people in software than to train software people in the book industry.

Day of Code 2019 sponsors