The Bookseller

FutureBook Conference 2016

December 16th, 2016 by Puyu Cheng | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on FutureBook Conference 2016
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FutureBook is The Bookseller’s digital publishing conference. This conference took place on 2nd December in London, and it also hosted the annual FutureBook Awards and the BookTech Showcase. FutureBook Conference is also Europe’s largest digital publishing conference. The key themes of this conference were:

  •  How publishers can define and better take advantage of current trends in digital
  • How innovation has become ingrained
  • The new business models coming out of the start-up sector
  • Change management within established businesses
  • Trends emerging over the horizon.

Although I didn’t go to the conference in person, I learned a lot by reading some articles from The Bookseller and the FutureBook’s tweets. I think this conference is very important for the future development of the publishing industry. There were four keynote speakers at the conference this year, including Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur; Ogilvy & Mather’s James Whatley; Anki Ahrnell, Bonnier AB’s chief digital and technology officer; and Eva Appelbaum, partner at Digital Talent @ Work. And after reading an article from The Bookseller, I was impressed by Eva Appelbaum’s speech.

Eva Appelbaum (twitter) is a digital strategy specialist at Digital Talent @Work. And the topic of her speech was “How to create the publishing people of tomorrow”. She said: “We’re in an awkward position, we have one leg in industrial, and one reaching forward to digital but we don’t know what the ground we’re stepping into is going to look like.” That’s right. Since twenty-first Century, digital technology has been widely used, and now more and more industries need to rely on digital technology to survive. And with the rapid development of digital publishing, publishing industry had a revolution.

Now the publishing industry is at an important turning point. Just like Appelbaum said, the publishing industry has one leg in traditional publishing, and one reaching forward to digital publishing. Maybe the development of digital publishing is a great threat to the traditional publishing industry, but at the same time, it also offers a broader development space for the publishing industry. With the rapid development of digital publishing, there is a severe hit for the sales of print books. But e-books and audiobooks sales are increasing, which gives publishers some opportunities to gain profits. So for traditional publishing, digital publishing is not only a challenge, but also an opportunity.

Appelbaum also said: “Publishers need to move away from thinking about digital as a silo and instead focus on cultivating the mindset and behaviours needed to thrive in the digital age.” I think the idea is profound. There is no doubt that digital publishing has great potential, but the development process will be very tortuous. Therefore, publishers need to actively explore new digital technology, while improving the development of traditional publishing, so as to make the development of the publishing industry in a stable state.

The Bookseller believes that “FutureBook is the must-attend event for anyone who wants to face our digital future from a position of power.” I agree with it. In my opinion, with the development of digital publishing, the FutureBook Conference seems to be more and more important.

You can find more information about FutureBook Conference 2016 on their website and twitter.

And you can read the article from The Bookseller about Eva Appelbaum’s speech.–‘Human revolution’ needs to be understood, urges Appelbaum

by Puyu Cheng

The President-Elect and the Publishing Industry

November 10th, 2016 by isabella_pioli | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on The President-Elect and the Publishing Industry
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When we started the semester discussing Publishing and threats to publishing, everyone was discussing Brexit. As an American, I recognized it as a threat, but I saw a threat on our horizon and so I too brought up a potential threat to Publishing… a Trump Presidency. crying-studentsEveryone chuckled, not really believing that it was a possibility. If we are being honest, if I’m being honest with myself, I saw the writing on the wall about five months ago when Trump became the Republican Presidential candidate. America is a pendulum when it comes to its’ presidents and these past four years have driven the Republican party farther to the right.

The day after the election, The Bookseller published as article titled “’Dismayed’ trade reacts to Donald Trump’s election” and I felt disgustingly vindicated. Trump’s presidency presents a threat to publishing just as it poses a problem to first amendment rights.People came up to me and gave me their condolences. We were all there at the funeral of America’s future, but this is not the first time we’ve felt that way about our country. Most felt the same fear upon George W. Bush’s election and re-election.This time the stakes are higher, this time people have more to lose. The LGBTQIA community has won so many victories in the past eight years and now we have elected a man whose vice president openly promotes conversion camps. Women have grown in their voices and intersectional feminism is steadily growing, but upon election night 53% of white women voted for Trump. Vice President Biden became a voice for a movement to bring an end to sexual assault and our President-elect has double digit accusations of sexual assault against him. This is truly a harrowing time in American history.

People are talking about a growth in anti-intellectualism with the election of Trump and all for which he stands. So, how can the publishing industry combat these new issues, well we can start by addressing the fact that these aren’t new issues at all, but a continuation of hate, ignorance, and fear. The lack of diversity is an issue that isn’t going away, because very few people are doing anything to stop it. By diversity, I don’t just mean the racial and economic disparities present in publishing, but the lack of diversity in topics. Heteronormativity in literature is an issue. Publishers are slowly coming out with more LGBTQ material, but most of it is produced by specialty publishers. Main publishers need to create more diverse content. We need main characters that are bisexual and state that they are bisexual. oscar-wilde-quoteWhat is bisexual? Authors need to write their characters with well-informed notions. The authors don’t need to be LGBTQ themselves but they need to know what they are talking about. People need to start understanding what feminism actually means, not just saying femi-nazi or assuming that its about women being better than men. We need to be explicit in our definitions and not leave anything up to interpretation. We need more characters that are people of color. We need POC’s to be described as human beings, not using food metaphors to describe the color of their skin. We need characters to understand and accept differences between cultures and have discussions about religion. We need literature (from YA to hyper-intellectualism) to be an inspiration and a source of accurate information. We need literature to build the bridges that real world conversations are failing at addressing. We need to be a strong global community that lifts each other up, that allows for a safe place fo minorities to escape into, and we need to never forget that fear and hate are founded in ignorance. Books disperse information and create worlds that give hope. We need hope in these next four years and the publishing industry needs to be at the heart of a movement to dispel misinformation, bigotry, and xenophobia. It has never been more important than it is now that we, as publishers, look at what we publish as a moral and ethical paragon of information. Let us quell the tide of fear and hate with more inclusivity and more diversification.

by Isabella Pioli

Blake Brooks, MLitt in Publishing Studies 2012-13

October 7th, 2014 by cs48@stir.ac.uk | Posted in Alumni | Comments Off on Blake Brooks, MLitt in Publishing Studies 2012-13
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BlakeBrooks‘StirPub supported me from day one of the course, allowing me to pursue the areas of publishing I was interested in. By helping me with internships they allowed me to gain the experience I needed, and the course provided wonderful networking opportunities. Without the experience and education I gained from the course I would never have achieved everything that I have. The course is the perfect first step to a career in Publishing.’

Blake Brooks, Marketing and Events coordinator, The Bookseller