A couple of us from ConversantLife.com attended Book Expo America (BEA) in Los Angeles last week. It's a massive event, with more than 2,000 exhibitors, 1,000 authors, and 25,000 people attending. It was hard to tell if any business was being conducted, but lots of people were milling around. Truth is, the publishing world is in a great deal of turmoil right now. Sales are flat, if not in decline, due to a number of factors: a decrease in reading among younger people, a move from print to digital content, a flat economy, and a dearth of blockbuster titles, such as Harry Potter.

Of these, the factor with the most serious long-term consequence is arguably the move from print to digital content. For every person who says, "I'll never read a book online," there are many more people who are accessing increasing amounts of digital content, whether it's news, commentary, or entertainment. It may be too early to declare the book to be an outmoded form of conveying content, but it's not to soon to recognize that most of us are getting our content from a wide variety of sources, with books being just one.

The truth is that "publishing" isn't confined to words printed on paper. By definition, the word "publish" simply means to "make public." So whether it's Paul Revere yelling, "the British are coming" while riding through villages on horseback, or a book getting delivered electronically to a device like the Amazon Kindle, or a video playing on ConversantLife.com, it's all publishing.

As you can imagine, the book publishers--from global behemoths like Random House to independent publishers like Harvest House (our book publishing partner)--are scrambling to develop new strategies in order to stay relevant, especially to younger readers. "Everybody in publishing has to bring their game to a higher level," said Allison Hill, president of Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena (just named bookstore of the year by Publishers Weekly).

Interestingly, many of the "big boys" are trying to do what we at ConversantLife.com have been doing now for several months: feature their authors on the Internet through blogs, podcasts, digital downloads, and videos. The idea is to create a relationship between the content creators and those who might have an interest in their content. What better way to do that than to enable content creators to produce a blog (or as we like to call it, a "micro site"). We have more than 40 bloggers actively producing great content on a variety of topics. Even our ConversantLife.com book authors blog, giving you a peek at their life "off the page." In addition, we are constantly producing video interviews with our authors. In fact, we shot an interview at BEA with Sean McDowell and Bill Dembski on their forthcoming book for ConversantLife.com, Understanding Intelligent Design.

Yes, there are dramatic changes going on in the world of books, but there are also great opportunities for creators to distribute their content in new ways. We're just excited that ConversantLife.com is becoming a key component in this new world of content distribution.