Rüdiger Wischenbart is one of the most prestigious voices in the analysis on the reality of the publishing industry in the world. Wischenbart spoke at the session organised at Readmagine 22 dedicated to training and educational strategies for the future of publishing under the title: “Reskilling, upskilling (trends in training for publishing)”.
In this short video you can follow Wischenbart’s intervention, in which he underlines the need to promote collaboration instead of each company focusing on telling how well they do things. This idea of “collaboration” has been very important during the pandemic.
The pandemic crisis has not meant the same thing for everyone, it has not been identical type of crisis for everyone: it has not meant the equivalent for large companies as for small companies, nor has it been the same for large markets as for the little ones. Because the big ones have all the possibilities to add efforts or to work together in the book value chain.
Small and medium size companies cannot be oriented towards innovations as big ones do to face a crisis. This Covid-19 crisis already had a precedent with a sustained drop in printed books sold in each market, which is a long term problem for all, but a huge challenge for small businesses.
Wischenbart takes this situation as a reference as an explanation of the objectives of SIDT, the project supported by the Creative Europe programme, in the sense that this initiative is precisely about experimenting and learning about the type of innovative training that this type of company needs .
The project has been developed by Wischenbart’s own consultant, the Beletrina publishing house, the Germán Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation, the European Federation of Publishers and the Lithuanian Publishers Association.
What was thought with this initiative is that it was possible to identify some of the main educational challenges and experience the formulas to offer this training in the most convenient way. One of the first ideas was to opt for a granular structure -composed of small training content- that would allow any worker to connect to an online course for a short time without negatively disrupting the work processes of a small company.
One of the lessons learned is that it is very difficult to get large numbers of students engaged. However, it has also been learned that it is possible to form these collaborative dynamics and this is the reason why the project partners have decided to reapply for a second execution period.
Rüdiger Wischenbart, born 1956 in Graz, Austria, is the founder of «Content and Consulting» (since 2003) and is an author specializing in culture, cultural industries, world book markets, innovation in the book industry, literature, media of communication, and communication.
More recently, he has researched and co-authored several reports on global publishing markets, notably the «Global eBook» report, the «Global Publishing Markets» survey for the International Publishers Association, «(IPA) and the» Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry”, updated annually since 2007 (initiated by Livres Hebdo, France, and co-published by The Library, UK, buchreport, Germany, PublishNews Brazil, and Publishers Weekly, US). Wischenbart co-authored the 2010, 2009 and 2008 “Diversity Reports” mapping translation markets across Europe. He serves as director of international affairs for BookExpo America, coordinating its «Global Market Forum» and has directed the program of the Publishers’ Forum in Berlin.
