On the eve of the 49th annual Bologna Children’s Book Fair, an international crowd of just under 400 turned out for the second Tools of Change Bologna, an espresso-fueled daylong conference held Sunday at the Palazzo dei Congressi, on the fairgrounds. Apps vs. e-books? HTML5 vs. EPUB 3? Apple vs. Android? The questions were many, and the answers—discussed in four keynote addresses and nearly two dozen breakout sessions—perhaps fewer. Integrity of e-products, especially those intended for children, was a recurring theme (“Digital is just another format,” said Andrew Sharp of Hachette Children’s UK at one of the afternoon panels. “Hold true to your current ideals”), as was the array of digital options available to publishers, each with their advantages and disadvantages in terms of development costs, pricing, competition, and more.
