HIGHLIGHTS FROM READMAGINE 23

HOW PUBLISHERS ARE MOVING TOWARDS ACCESSIBILITY IN EUROPE

Gregorio Pellegrino (Chief Accessibility Officer at Fondazione LIA) organised a conversation during the Accessibility Camp, that took place within the conference Readmagine 23. This session was focused on the situation of accessibility in the European publishing landscape.

MUSSINELLI: WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE ACCESSIBILITY OF BOOKS?

Cristina Mussinelli is the General Secretary of Fondazione LIA, a prestigious organisation created by AIE to work on the field of accessibility for books. As a partner in the Aldus Up project, Fondazione LIA organised the Accessibility Camp in collaboration with Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez during the Readmagine conference 2023.

DO YOU WANT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS AN ACCESSIBLE READING EXPERIENCE?: WATCH THIS ACCESSIBILITY CAMP PRESENTATION

During the opening of the third day in Readmagine 23 with the Accessibility Camp, the Director of Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, Luis González, welcomed the audience by explaining the main goals of that day of presentations, debates and working groups organised by Fondazione LIA.

TOWARDS AN ACCESSIBLE DIGITAL PUBLISHING ECOSYSTEM

Luis González (Director of Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez) moderated the conversation between Arantza Larrauri (General Director Libranda De Marque), Silvia Clemares (Senior Country Manager, Content, Spain, Portugal, and Latin America Rakuten Kobo) and Ted van der Togt (Researcher KB National Library of the Netherlands) about accessibility challenges from the perspective of the whole book value chain (publishing, distribution and retail).

CARRENHO, WNUKOWSKY AND ROSILLO: ON INNOVATION

One of the conversations organised during Readmagine 23 was focused on a very general issue: Innovation in the book industry. The session was moderated by Carlo Carrenho (Head of Business Development at StreetLib) with the participation of Alyna Wnukowsky (CEO at Libri) and Santiago Rosillo (Business Development & Innovation at Hachette Livre).

THE MEDIA SECTOR: A BENCHMARK IN READMAGINE 23

The Managing Director of Libranda organised a conversation on the situation of the media during the last period and its future trends. The purpose of this session in Readmagine 23 was to get some inspiration from this sector for the book industry.

WISCHENBART PUBLISHING SHIFTS FROM PRODUCING STUFF TO CREATING SERVICES FOR READERS

Rüdiger Wischenbart was one the speakers during Readmagine 23 as quite a few years before. During this edition of the conference he shared some thoughts about the situation of the publishing industry as part of the content and creative industries.

KOREA: MORE THAN WEBTOONS

During Readmagine 23 the “focus market” was Korea. The Korean digital content specialist, Beatrice Yong-in Lin, presented the general landscape of the creative industries in the Asian country and her insights on the present trends. You can follow her complete presentation in this video recording.

THE PUBLISHERS VIEW: 5 YEARS AHEAD

A great challenge was posed to Santos Palazzi, Chantal Restivo-Alessi and Marie-Pierre Sangouard during their participation in Readmagine 23: neither more nor less than predicting the evolution of the major trends in the industry of books over the next 5 or 10 years, from the perspectives or senior professionals of the publishing industry. The result of this challenge can be followed in this video.

TALENT ATTRACTION FOR THE BOOK INDUSTRY

Skills and attracting talent for the book industry were cross-cutting themes during most of the Readmagine 23 sessions. Luis González (FGSR) coordinated a conversation with María José Gálvez (Spanish Ministry of Culture), Christoph Bläsi (University of Mainz) and Porter Anderson (Publishing Perspectives) in which they discussed the training challenges for the industry and shared their opinions about the ideas to keep in mind during the next years.

CHRISTOPH BLÄSI: AI FOR THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

Christoph Bläsi presented a general landscape of Artificial Intelligence applications in the publishing industry.

THE CHALLENGES OF ACCESSIBILITY IN PUBLISHING

Cristina Musinelli (Fondazione LIA) coordinated a conversation in Readmagine between two great experts in the management of solutions to provide accessibility to books: Hadrien Gardeur (Demarque) and Paolo Casarini (Ed. Il Mulino).

THE AUDIO LANDSCAPE

On the first day of Readmagine 2023, Javier Celaya -CEO at DosDoce and always a keen collaborator in Readmagine- opened the session dedicated to audio landscape for the publishing industry, by sharing with the audience a piece of information, published by the Audio Publishers Association. The information is meaningful about the importance that audio has today for the book industry: During the last eleven years the turnover has been growing with double-digit figures worldwide. To this data, Celaya added in his presentation that in the case of the Spanish market -which began later- growth of 50% per year has been observed over the last five years.

SHAUNA MORAN (GWI): WHAT AND HOW GEN Z?

Shauna Moran is Trends Manager at GWI (Global Web Index is a London-based audience profiling consulting company, which collaborates every year in Readmagine) and presented the latest trends in content consumption among Gen Z.

MATT LOCKE: SIX SPACES OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND SIX TAKEAWAYS FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES

The founder and director of Storythings presented in Readmagine the insights from a report his company implemented about the new patterns of behaviour of young audiences when using social media. This qualitative research provides very interesting and useful takeaways for all those publishing or retailing content for young people.

DIGITAL MARKET TOOLS FOR THE BOOK INDUSTRY IN READMAGINE 22

The motto for this round table in Readmagine was: “Our mission is to build a prosperous future for storytelling and the world of publishing”.

PORTER ANDERSON: OTHER PEOPLE’S SKILL SETS

As Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives – the international book-publishing news medium created and owned by Frankfurter Buchmesse – I bring you the greetings of Frankfurt. We hope to see you there in October, and I’d like to read to you a short passage of text first presented at Frankfurt in 2018.

10 YEARS OF READMAGINE AT THE SAME VENUE

During the aperture of Readmagine 23, the director of the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez welcomed all the audience with this video. With this short video the aim of the organisers of this conference focused on Innovation for the Book Industry, Reading and Libraries is to show gratitude to the participants who share knowledge and ideas.

ENRICO TURRIN: THE EUROPEAN BOOK MARKET 2022/23

The Deputy DIrector of the European Federation of Publishers presented in Readmagine the latest data on the European book market in 2022 and some projections based on the first quarter figures of 2023.

THE DSA IS ADOPTED BY THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

The final text approved by the legislators amends some previous proposals that would have made the fight against illegal content more difficult than it already was under the E-Commerce Directive of 2000. This new Digital Services Act provides a more coherent legal framework that will allow European content sector (as the publishing industry) to continue protecting their content online.

BOIX, GONZÁLEZ AND PASOLI: THE POST-PANDEMIC FUTURE OF BOOK FAIRS

The Knowledge Hub of the Aldus Up project published an article by three of the Aldus Up partners Luis González (Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez), Elena Pasoli (Bologna Children’s Book Fair) and Marifé Boix Garcia (Frankfurt Book Fair) with a recap and analysis of the results of a discussion session during the last Frankfurt Book Fair.

NEW TRAINING PROGRAMME WITH A FOCUS ON INNOVATION FOR SMES OF PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

The SIDT initiative launches a training programme with a focus on innovation and cultural diversity in literary translations launched for small and medium-sized publishers. 5 renowned book industry organizations team up, with support from Creative Europe, to disseminate market insights and practical learnings about novel approaches in publishing.

PUBLIC MEASURES IN EUROPE TO SUPPORT THE BOOK SECTOR DURING THE PANDEMIC IN 2020

Aldus Knowledge-Hub publishes an executive summary of the white paper on the impact of 2020 pandemic on the European publishing industry called for public measures to support the recovery.

ALDUS UP: MAPPING DIFFERENCES IN STATISTICAL METHODOLOGIES FOR READING AND TRANSLATION

Europe is looking for homogeneous statistics on reading and translation. This is what emerges from two studies by Aldus Up, the European book fairs network co-founded in the framework of the Creative Europe programme and coordinated by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), which are published on the network’s platform on 16 June during the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE COVID-19 CRISIS ON THE BOOK MARKET – AN OVERVIEW OF 2020

The Federation of European Publishers published a very interesting report on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the book sector in Europe. Those days, many of our countries had just experienced the first wave of lockdowns. This new document updates the information from the previous survey with a first approximation of the impact of the pandemic on the book sector in 2020.

TRAINING PROGRAMME WITH A FOCUS ON INNOVATION AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN LITERARY TRANSLATIONS LAUNCHED FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED PUBLISHERS.

5 renowned book industry organizations team up, with support from Creative Europe, to disseminate market insights and practical leanings about novel approaches in publishing. (between April and June 2021)

THE K-HUB OF ALDUS UP EXPLAINS HOW THE NEW CREATIVE EUROPE PROGRAMME WILL SUPPORT THE BOOK SECTOR

The Commission plans to launch the first calls under the new Creative Europe programme in April and The Knowledge Hub of the Aldus Up project published an article by Enrico Turrin  (Deputy Director of the European Federation of Publishers) with a clear recap of the new opportunities.

POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY UNDER THE NEW EUROPE’S DIGITAL COMPASS

The European Commission presented a communication on March 9th  vision about the targets and strategies for a successful digital transformation of Europe by 2030, within the framework of the transition towards a climate neutral, circular and resilient economy. This strategy is named as a Europe’s Digital Decade, the course towards a digitally empowered Europe by 2030.

LUIS GONZÁLEZ (FGSR): SKILLS FOR BUILDING DIGITAL BLOCKS

In 2009 we contemplated the reading promotion and the publishing industry as if they were blank slates waiting for a next vision of the future to be defined because of the impact of Internet and digital devices. We despaired when we had no response to many of our attempts for engaging the institutions in reimagining the value propositions, workflows, procedures and even goals.

ALDUS UP’ AT FRANKFURT: PREPARING FOR THE RELAUNCH OF TRADE FAIRS

Aldus Up, the European network for the relaunch of trade fairs and the exchange of translation rights in Europe, makes its debut in Frankfurt with four professional meetings.

The European Commission-funded project looks to the digital world to create new ways of community building between readers and publishers, revolutionise the trade fair system and make it sustainable even after the Covid-19 crisis.

BRYAN O’LEARY: BUILDING A BETTER WORKFLOW

Brian O’Leary is executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, a U.S. trade association that disseminates information, creates and implements standards, and conducts research to benefit the book publishing supply chain. Before being named to this role in 2016, O’Leary was principal of Magellan Media Consulting, which helped publishers improve how they create, manage and distribute content.

OREN TEICHER: INDIE BOOKSTORE RESURGENCE

During the Readmagine 2019 conference took place a professional conversation with Oren Teicher – CEO of the American Booksellers Association- with a selected group of publishers, distributors and booksellers at Casa del Lector (the FGSR headquarter).