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. Therefore, Wischenbart used the title «Publishing beyond publishing» for his presentation and started by declaring that figures and trends aren’t enough to understand the situation of the publishing industries. Those some things that are missed from the statistics were the centre of analysis of his presentation that you can follow in this video.
Wischenbart considers that «If you look at the reality of people are using this products (publishing products) most of the data are not including self-publishing and many concepts are really embracing what happens to the book business in Spotify or Webtoons or Tonies». Following that inquietude he started doing questions:
- What is the “book business“ component in a Netflix series related to a book?
- How can I measure the scope of such “publishing“ in a «Global Publishing Ranking“?
- How can we understand market developments when «self publishing“, «subscription“
or «streaming“ are not included in book statistics? - How do we define what is a «book“ today? And why does it matter?
You can follow in Wischenbart’s presentation the panorama of different and new ways of reaching the content consumers, such as:
- Tonies, a community for 2 to 6 year old kids.
- Rebel Girls, a community for young girls with 8.5 million books sold.
- Wattpad webtoon studios, a fully integrated studio that harnesses the power of storytelling on our platforms to propel original stories to off-platform entertainment and publishing success, captivating audiences around the world (with 90 million users).
In this presentation Wischenbart shares his insights on those platforms and how have became huge publishing ecosystems and proposes some conclusions, such as «The industry of publishing shifts from producing stuff to creating services for readers and that is a major fundamental shift».
Rüdiger Wischenbart, born in 1956 in Graz, Austria, is the founder of “Content and Consulting” (since 2003), and a writer specialized in culture, cultural industries, the global book markets, innovation in the book industry, literature, media, and communication. Most recently, he co-founded ReBoot Books, a series of professional debates on the international book business, and the Digital Consumer Book Barometer, a market report series with a focus on ebooks, audiobooks, online sales and subscription. Since 2007, he annually updates the Global 50 Ranking of the Publishing Industry (www.wischenbart.com/ranking), co-authors the Diversity Report series n literary translation in Europe, and he coordinates SIDT, a collaborative project for innovation trainings under a Creative Europe grant. A former Head of Communications at the Frankfurt Book Fair and Director of International Affairs at BookExpo America, Wischenbart authored several books on migration and modernization in Central and South East Europe, notably “Canettis Angst” (1994).
