Frankfurt

WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019 VISIT PW AND BOOKBRUNCH AT HALL 6.0 D40

N E W F R O M R O B E R T K I YO SA K I A N D JA M E S R I C K A R D S

THE
RAVENS
How to prepare for and profit from
the turbulent times ahead

Olga Tokarczuk –
literature can unite us photo: Frankfurter Buchmesse/Claus Setzer

In her remarks at the 2019 Frankfurt Book Fair opening

press conference, Nobel Prize-winning Polish author Olga
Tokarczuk spoke of the power of literature to unify a world
that seems to be fraying politically, writes Andrew
Albanese.
“I believe in literature which ties people together, that
highlights what people have in common, despite the
differences – colour, sexual orientation, or anything which
may separate us on the surface,” Tokarczuk said. “I believe
in a kind of literature which makes clear that at a deeper Frankfurt Book Fair CEO Juergen Boos and Olga Tokarczuk
level, below the surface we are tied together through
invisible, but existing threads. A kind of literature which wing nationalists hold on to power. On Monday, Polish
talks about a lively, ever-changing world of unity, of which Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told supporters that
we are a small, but not insignificant part.” the election results represented a “huge social mandate” to
Tokarczuk was named the 2018 Nobel Laureate for remake the country, an agenda that has included rejecting
literature last week, while she was on tour in Germany, and the LGBTQ community, and multiculturalism. Ahead of
was a last-minute addition to the Frankfurt Book Fair’s the elections, Tokarczuk, a vocal critic of the government,
schedule. She is the author of the Man Booker said that the election was a choice “between democracy
International Prize-winning novel Flights, and her latest and authoritarianism”.
novel to be translated into English is Drive Your Plow Asked about the election results, however, Tokarczuk
over the Bones of the Dead. She is perhaps best known in tried to sound an optimistic note. “Of course I am not very
her home country for her 2014 historical novel The Books enthused about the outcome of the election, but I am
of Jacob. excited about the new composition of parliament,” she
Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize and her appearance at the fair said, noting the addition of more representatives on the
are certainly well timed, coming amid new elections in left. “I think some new things will happen over the next
Poland which saw the country’s ultra-conservative right four years here.”

Paul Baggaley appointed Bloomsbury Frankfurt Briefcase

editor-in-chief A selection
Bernadine Evaristo

Moves from of top titles

Frankfurt
Picador to from US and
day 1
take up role UK agents
highlights
in new year
Page 6
Page 3
Page 4
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY

Day 1 highlights Frankfurt face

8.45 FOOD FOR THOUGHT: EXPLORING TIMELY AND Benas Berantas, literary agent, Vilnius,
TRENDING TOPICS IN SCHOLARLY AND ACADEMIC
PUBLISHING
Lithuania
Breakfast with the Society for Scholarly Publishing and The Scholarly
Kitchen Chefs
Hall 4.2 N101

10.00 NORWAY GUEST OF HONOUR OPENING EVENT

Pavilion – Forum level 1

11.30 THE EU DIGITAL SINGLE MARKET COPYRIGHT

DIRECTIVE
A Copyright Clearance Center event
Hall 4.2 N101

13.00 FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: OPENING EVENT

Pavilion, main stage

14.00 THE GLOBAL 50 CEO TALK WITH KELLY

LUEGENBIEHL, NETFLIX
Frankfurt Pavilion (Agora)

14.30 THE FUTURE OF TRANSFORMATIVE AGREEMENTS:

SUBSCRIPTIONS, RIGHTS & OPEN ACCESS
A Copyright Clearance Center event Benas Berantas
Hall 4.2 N101
“My biggest challenge is finding a way to raise the visibility
15.30 ROBERT HARRIS TALKS TO SPIEGEL EDITOR for my country’s books on the global stage. but there is
MARTIN WOLF more and more recognition for Lithuanian illustrators
Hall 3.0 D56 across the world – one of my clients, Rasa Janciauskaite, is
15.30 FIGHTING FICTION. THE ART OF WRITING doing the identity for the Bologna Book Fair, which is a
LITERATURE TODAY. WITH KARL OVE KNAUSGÅRD AND huge boost.”
JUERGEN BOOS
Pavilion, main stage

16.00 KARIN FOSSUM IN CONVERSATION WITH

PUBLISHER ANDERS HEGER
Pavilion, main stage
INSIDE:
16.30 “KNIFE”: JO NESBØ ON HIS NEW HARRY HOLE JUERGEN BOOS CHRIS KENNEALLY
NOVEL INTERVIEW PURSE POWER
Pavilion, main stage
12 22
DAN CONWAY LENNY PICKER
QUALITY CONTROL AI BOOKS
To contact Frankfurt Show Daily at the 14 24
Fair, please visit us at the Publishers
Weekly stand in Hall 6.0, D40. NORWAY NATHAN HULL
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Publisher: Joseph Murray HONOUR 16 28
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Editors: Andrew Albanese, Nicholas Clee, Neill Denny KEN FOLLETT LENNY PICKER
Reporter: Ed Nawotka FRIENDSHIP TOUR NORWAY CRIME
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Layout and Production: Heather McIntyre TERI TAN US SPOTLIGHT
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3
 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
Paul Baggaley to be new Bloomsbury editor-in-chief
Paul Baggaley, publisher at Picador, is to join Bloomsbury
in the new year as editor-in-chief. He has big shoes to fill:
the first holder of the role was Liz Calder, and she was
succeeded by Alexandra Pringle. Pringle now takes the title
of executive publisher, “and remains pivotal to Bloomsbury’s
publishing and her own authors”. Baggaley will report to
Emma Hopkin, MD of Bloomsbury’s Consumer Publishing.
Nigel Newton, founder and CEO of Bloomsbury, said:
“Paul’s appointment signifies our intent and ambition for
our adult publishing which has always been at the core of
Bloomsbury’s success and what Bloomsbury stands for.
This appointment makes Paul core to the strategy for
future growth of our fiction, non-fiction and cookery lists.
We are delighted to welcome him to Bloomsbury.”
Lerner Publishing Services:
small is beautiful
Sixty years after Harry Learner founded Lerner Publishing
Group in Minneapolis, the company is thriving, with a 20%
increase in revenues this year over last year, writes Claire
Kirch. But while LPG has grown and expanded in scope, with
more than 7,000 titles in print, and about 700 titles released
each year under 15 imprints, one LPG division’s growth is
being kept at a slow pace: Lerner Publisher Services, the
division that provides print and digital distribution for
small presses in the US as well as international publishers
seeking entry into North American markets. Officially
launched in 2011 with five client-publishers, LPS has 15
LPS client-publishers, with a 16th – Ruby Tuesday Books,
based in the UK – signing on as of 1 November.
The list of current LPS client-publishers reads like a
United Nations of children’s book publishing: among them
are Andersen Press USA, Big & Small (Australia), Gecko
Press (New Zealand), Hungry Tomato (UK), JR Comics
(South Korea), and Lorimer Children and Teens (Canada).
“Rather than our client-publishers being one among
hundreds, we’re keeping it small so that they’re big fish in a
comfortable pond,” Wexler says. He added that the small
size allowed for LPS personnel to consult with its client-
publishers, especially those based in other countries, on
such matters as titling and covers that are appropriate for
the North American market, as well as providing sales
feedback. Just before the Frankfurt Book Fair began,
Lerner was preparing to launch a website dedicated to the
distribution business, LernerPublisherServices.com.
“When you find the right fit – in anything, really – you
want to go for it, and that means the right fit on both
sides,” Wexler said. “It’s important for both the publisher
and for the distributor that it work both ways. Then it’s a
great relationship that can last a long time.”
4
WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
Baggaley said: “It has been a
privilege to work with the Pan
Macmillan team to develop
Picador and I’m hugely proud
of what the editorial team
has achieved in publishing
great voices with commercial
success and critical acclaim. I
am extremely grateful to
Anthony Forbes Watson for
giving me this opportunity
Paul Baggaley and to Jeremy Trevathan for
his support.
“There are very few roles that could have tempted me,
but Nigel Newton and Emma Hopkin’s vision for the
future of Bloomsbury was compelling. It is a real honour to
follow in the footsteps of my two predecessors in this role,
two of the most brilliant, indeed legendary publishers of
recent times and I particularly relish the chance to work
with Alexandra in my new role.”
Picador yesterday announced promotions including those
of Kris Doyle and Sophie Jonathan to editorial director.
Earlier this year, Ravi Mirchandani moved up to editor-in-
chief, Francesca Main became associate publisher, and
Georgina Morley became publishing director.
Self-publishing up again –
Bowker
The growth in the number of books self-published in the US
continued its rapid growth in 2018, jumping 40% over 2017,
according to Bowker’s annual survey of the self-publishing market.
In its report, Self-Publishing in the United States, 2013-2018: Print
and Ebooks, the total number of print and ebooks that were self-
published in 2018 was 1.68 million, up from 1.19 million in 2017.
Bowker measures the size of the market based on the number of
ISBNs registered, and thus does not include self-published ebooks
from Amazon’s Kindle division, which uses an Amazon identifier.
Amazon is considered to be the largest publisher of self-
published ebooks even if no number is available. Amazon’s
CreateSpace division dominates the print self-publishing
market with 1.4 million self-published print titles last year, up
from 929,290 in 2017. Lulu published the second most print
self-published titles last year, with its output rising to 37,456
titles from 36,651 in 2017, according to Bowker. Author
Solutions, through its many different imprints, released 16,019
self-published print books last year and 10,585 ebooks, with
both figures slightly higher in 2018 over 2017.
Excluding Amazon, the top ebook self-publisher last year
was Smashwords, which released nearly 72,000 titles, down
3% from 2017.
 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
Frankfurt Book Fair Briefcase 2019
By Rachel Deahl and Claire Kirch in New York, and Neill Denny and Nicholas
Clee in London
US
CREATIVE ARTISTS AGENCY
Say Your Word, Then Leave by Karen Attiah
Dey Street US
Jamal Khashoggi’s editor at the Washington Post explores how the outspoken
journalist went from being a confidante of Saudi Arabia’s rulers to becoming
a critic of the country’s polices, leading to his murder by Saudi assassins.
FOUNDRY LITERARY + MEDIA
Anything but Monogamy by Rachel Krantz
The agency calls this memoir by one of the founding editors of Bustle a
“groundbreaking, deeply personal account” of a woman’s sexual journey,
and says it anticipates that the book will “break down barriers”.
Clues to the Universe by Christina Li
HarperCollins US
This middle grade debut by a 20-year-old Stanford University undergrad is
a tale of two 12-year-olds who build a rocket to find a long-missing father.
THE GERNERT COMPANY
Long Bright River: A Novel by Liz Moore
Riverhead US
The agency notes that this suspense novel is a “huge Sarah McGrath buy”
and will be published “in a major way”, with a film deal in place.
ICM PARTNERS
Consider This by Chuck Palahniuk
Grand Central US
The agency calls this literary memoir by the author of Fight Club “a love
letter to readers, booksellers, and the writing life”.
Untitled by Toni Morrison
Knopf US
This collection of quotations from the recently deceased literary icon’s
fiction and non-fiction writings – which have already been translated into
40 languages – is sure to appeal to a huge international audience.
INKWELL MANAGEMENT
The Revisioners by Margaret Sexton-Wilkerson
Counterpoint US
This sophomore effort by the novelist follows the lives of two women,
one black and one white, who establish an uneasy friendship in the 1920s
South, and the legacy their descendants inherit.
TRIDENT MEDIA GROUP
The Black Swan of Paris by Karen Robards
Mira US
This latest read by the author of over 30 books is, the agency says, the
tale of a singer living in Nazi-occupied France who’s forced to choose
between her country and her family.
6
WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
Then She Vanished by T Jefferson Parker
Putnam US
This is the latest thriller in the Shamus Award-winning Roland Ford
series, by an author who has received the Edgar Award three times.
WILLIAM MORRIS ENDEAVOR
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Riverhead US
The new novel from Straub (The Vacationers) offers, the agency explains,
a “deeply satisfying story about parenting, siblings, growing older, and all
the small and big things that leave their mark as we enter adulthood”.
Friendship by Heike Faller and Valerio Vidali
Faller, an editor at the German magazine Zeit, and Vidali, an Italian
illustrator based in Berlin, team up again for what the agency describes as
“a gorgeously illustrated book” that “will remind us of the many kinds of
friendships that we experience in our lives”.
WRITERS HOUSE
How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
Random House US
This novel from the author of Behold the Dreamers is, the agency says, “a
masterful explanation of what happens when an American oil company’s
reckless and environmentally degrading drive for profit, coupled with the
ghosts of colonialism, comes up against an African village’s quest for
justice – and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the
sake of her people’s freedom”.
Poisoned by Jennifer Donnelly
Scholastic US
After the success of the Carnegie Medal- and Printz Honor-winning
author’s Stepsister, which reimagined Cinderella, Donnelly takes on Snow
White. In this YA take on the classic, Donnelly, Writers House says,
“deftly explores entrenched cultural myths as her determined heroine sets
out to prove she is not too weak or foolish to rule the throne, and that
even the darkest magic can’t extinguish the fire burning inside every girl”.
THE WYLIE AGENCY
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
Random House US
A timely tale of two fathers – one Israeli, the other Palestinian – who lose
their young daughters to violence, by the recipient of such honours as the
National Book Award, the IMPAC Prize, an Oscar nomination, and
several European awards.
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
Bloomsbury US
A tale of “good intentions and reckless actions” set in 1988 East Berlin
explores the cyclical nature of history and how the past is rewritten by
those currently in power. Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.
Continues on page 8 g
 Celebrating 60 Years of Children’s Publishing
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 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

f Continued from page 6

UK
AITKEN ALEXANDER
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Hamish Hamilton UK
Booker-shortlisted verse novel, about an interconnected group of Black
British women.

GEORGINA CAPEL
A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should
Respond by Daniel Susskind
Allen Lane UK
Explores how we might thrive in a world where technology has made
many jobs redundant.

C&W
One Night Only by Julietta Henderson
Transworld UK
Following his best friend Jax’s death, 12-year-old would-be comedian
Norman seeks to look after his mum, find the father he’s never met, and
honour Jax’s memory by performing at the Edinburgh fringe.

CURTIS BROWN
Don’t Turn Around by Jessica Barry
Harvill Secker UK
Two women are on a desolate road that slices through the New Mexican
desert, bound together by a mission they can’t afford to fail.

DHH LITERARY AGENCY

The Black Hawks by David Wragg
HarperVoyager UK
An epic fantasy adventure debut for fans of Joe Abercrombie and Nicholas
Eames about a bunch of foul-mouthed mercenaries, a knight and a prince.

42 MP
Alone by JL Butler
HarperCollins UK
McMafia meets Fatal Attraction in psychological thriller about a lonely
housewife who is stalked after a one-night stand with a college sweetheart.

GREENE & HEATON

Twenty Questions for Jeanie Greene by Helen Fisher
Simon & Schuster UK
A world of second chances – do you believe in them? How much? And
when, and how, should we let go of the past?

AM HEATH
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Tinder Press
A new departure for the author: the story behind Shakespeare’s most famous play.

JOHNSON & ALCOCK

The Stranger Times by CK McDonnell
Transworld UK
Fantasy trilogy following the antics of a newspaper team dedicated to the
paranormal and suddenly forced to investigate supernatural forces.
Continues on page 10 g

8
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
M O N E TA R Y F U N D f Continued from page 8
P U B L I C AT I O N S JULA
Rules for Living by Tamsin Kelly
Orion UK
Daisy Cooper wasn’t meant to die: a clerical error is behind it – and
Death himself is to blame.

MADELEINE MILBURN
The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
Picador UK
Inspired by three lighthouse keepers who went missing in 1900 and were
never found.

RACHEL MILLS LITERARY

The CBD Bible: Cannabis and the Wellness Revolution That Will Change
Your Life by Dr Dani Gordon
Orion Spring UK
Doctor and government adviser on medical cannabis cuts through the
noise and outlandish claims to show what this new medicine can do for
our health.

MMB CREATIVE
Come Again by Robert Webb
Canongate UK
Debut novel by the no 1 bestselling author of How Not To Be a Boy: a
time-travelling story of love and adventure set in London, for fans of
David Nicholls’ One Day.

NORTHBANK TALENT MANAGEMENT

The Killing in the Consulate by Jonathan Rugman
Simon & Schuster UK
A chilling, page-turning account of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in
Istanbul and the wider ramifications for global politics.

ANDREW NURNBERG ASSOCIATES

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
Transworld UK

Visit IMF
Crime debut set in a former sanatorium in the Swiss Alps that cannot
mask for long its dark history despite conversion into a luxury hotel.

in Hall 4.2/J72
PFD
Madam by Phoebe Wynne
Quercus UK
A modern gothic debut novel set in a girls’ boarding school.

Browse new publications SHEIL LAND

and pick up a copy of our Black Widows by Catherine Quinn
Orion UK
latest catalog! A thriller set in Utah and told through the alternating perspectives of
three women, the wives of a murdered Mormon man.

UNITED AGENTS
Forever Human by Peter Scott Morgan
Michael Joseph UK

bookstore.IMF.org Memoir by a robotics scientist with motor neuron disease who is working
with tech firms such as Intel, Microsoft and Dell to develop a version of
himself that will survive – and thrive. ■

10
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 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
A stable Frankfurt in
an unstable world
Andrew Richard Albanese talks to
Juergen Boos
A decade ago, in the teeth of a global recession and a
digital revolution that some predicted would devastate the
book business, a cloud of uncertainty hung over the
Frankfurt Book Fair. As the 2019 fair opens, political
instability is still roiling the globe and technology remains
as challenging, but the Frankfurt Book Fair, like the book
itself, continues to show its resilience – and its importance.
“The political situation all over the world is very
unstable, but actually Frankfurt looks very, very stable,”
said Frankfurt Book Fair CEO Juergen Boos, in a recent
interview ahead of this year’s event. “We have a lot of new
initiatives, and more international events throughout the
year. And the book fair is spreading all over the city now. I
think the fair is getting more like it used to be, in the late
’80s and the ’90s, when we had all the big names and
literary events. That feeling is coming back, and it’s
bringing more of the purpose behind the books back to
Frankfurt. It’s not only about the rights, or distribution
businesses, it is a chance to identify the opportunities and
major strengths of the industry. That seems to get more and
more important each year.”
Indeed, the Frankfurt Book Fair remains the publishing
world’s most important rights fair – this year’s LitAg
once again will feature a record number of tables
representing agencies from all over the world. And on the
programming side, fair organisers continue to innovate
and embrace change, with a slate of events that explores
the opportunities and challenges facing the publishing
industry, while also highlighting the fair as a much-needed
beacon of thoughtful discussion, and inclusiveness.
“You’ve heard me say it many times, publishing is a very
important, very international business,” Boos said. “But
Frankfurt is also a cultural event, and, it’s a political
stage, too.”
Indeed, that role has never been more important than in
recent years, as the world grapples with the troubling rise
of nationalism, climate changes, the rise of fake news and
attacks on the free press. At last year’s event, for example,
the fair’s “On the Same Page” campaign highlighted free
speech and the freedom to publish, tied to the anniversary
of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. This year, the fair will feature a programme called
“Create Your Revolution”, inspired by the United Nations’
17 Sustainable Development Goals. The programme will
feature a slate of speakers, including Google Creative Lab’s
Tea Uglow; activist-actress Gina Belafonte; and Ethiopian
developer Betelhem Dessie.
12
WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
“Create Your
Revolution is about
the importance of
culture, and the
responsibility of the
individual to stand up.
The more our politics
fail, the more trade
agreements fail, the
more important the
role of the cultural
and the creative
sectors,” Boos said.
“This is what we want
to highlight this year.
That we have to be
more open to ideas,
Juergen Boos more critical to what’s
happening in the world, and, that we must speak up.”
Publishing, he added, is the business of speaking up.
Yet despite the growing political uncertainty around the
world – whether Brexit, or an American trade war with
China, for example – the book business arrives in Frankfurt
this year with a sense of confidence. Print book sales have
stabilised, even risen in recent years. Literary translations
are surging. And, digital technology, which once loomed as
a threat to the book business, is turning out to be a boost,
most notably in the digital audiobook sphere, where
revenues have been surging for the better part of the last
decade, bringing more consumers – new consumers, and
younger consumers at that – into the book world’s orbit.
“I think audiobooks have changed a lot, and there are a
lot of players now in Frankfurt, like Storytel and Audible.
They are all looking for more content and higher visibility,
so for this year we created the new audiobook area,” Boos
said, pointing to a major addition to the 2019 Frankfurt
Book Fair: Frankfurt Audio will offer a new international
marketplace for the digital audio sector, located in Hall 3.1,
with its own conference and speaker programme. “We also
have players like Netflix here,” Boos added, pointing to
more opportunities for publishers in a digital age where
subscription access is rebooting consumer expectations.
“We’ve always had a very strong movie and film focus, but
with streaming TV services, the business is changing,” Boos
noted. “I would say the streaming market is a big and
growing opportunity for publishers.”
Of course, the bedrock of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Boos
stresses, is the book. And it’s the stability of the book, and
the potential for growth in new markets around the world,
that is now a major source of confidence, even optimism,
for publishers.
Which is not to claim that the global book business in 2019
is without significant challenges. But, suffice it to say, survival
is not one of them. “Going back 10 years ago or so, we talked
about digital and the changes it would bring, but for three
years now, we’ve been talking about, ‘oh, wait, that didn’t
happen?’” Boos said. “So, there’s a very positive spirit.” ■
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Quality control and the prove an antidote to the

modern crisis of trust in

publisher’s role information online.

Over the past few
years, the UK
Just a few months ago – admittedly a very long time in politics government has been
– the Publishers Association (PA) marked the publication of wrestling with the
Quality Control: Reading, Publishing and the Modern Attention challenges the digital
Economy, a report by cross-party think-tank Demos, writes economy poses. These
Dan Conway. We supported Demos in its work looking at how challenges range from
the digital reading and content environments impact readers. making sure there is fair
The report’s findings are stark. Demos, using a combination of competition and fair
polling and focus group research, found that the public thinks that tax rules, through to
moderation in the online space would help combat disinformation considering how we can
or “fake news” (48%), self-harm or suicide (41%), terrorism all stay safe online.
(35%) and mental health conditions (33%). What’s more, the Online infringement has
report looks into how publishing’s products and services are more also been a major focus,
relevant today in light of the threats the online world presents. Dan Conway with the PA representing
the book industry and supporting authors in discussions with
Guardians of truth online platforms and the government on how to limit
What is clear is that there is a great deal of public anxiety intellectual property infringement on online marketplaces.
about content online and the impact it is having on society. Digital platforms, including Google, Facebook and others,
This is where the book industry has a role to play. Publishers are cross-media providers hosting content across all markets,
are the guardians of truth because of our rigorous approach to making this digital landscape highly interconnected and unlike
content selection, enhancement and production. But we are anything we’ve seen before. Two-thirds of adults now say that
also the experts in high-quality edited content, which can the internet is an essential part of their lives, a statistic that

The shortlist is out. Discover the winner on 2nd November.

CE L E BR AT I NG DI S T I NGU I S H E D F IC T ION BY I N DI A N W R I T E R S
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14
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
would have been unthinkable even ten years ago when
smartphones were only just beginning to take hold.
Digital dependence
The rise of digital platforms, and our resultant reliance on
them, has led to a culture of dependence focused on a small
number of companies. This dependence has widespread
ramifications for both society and business. We will continue
to urge the government to consider the impact of this carefully,
and to ensure that the companies involved are required to take
due responsibility and care for those using their services.
In business, this dependence manifests itself in how commerce is
conducted online and how platforms (such as Amazon) dominate
routes to market. In social terms, this dependence is even more
apparent. Quality Control found that a significant number of
people consider themselves “addicted” to social media, with
42% of 18-34-year olds identifying as such. Of this group, 65%
of people say they use social media once a day. The same survey
looked into the relative enjoyment of reading books compared
with using social media (46% compared to 19%). Books remain
an important haven from the online world – whether in print or
digital format – and the case for promoting long-form, reliably-
edited content has only been strengthened by Demos’ work.
In a world where “fake news” and “fake science” pollute our
information sources and society is struggling to arm itself with
the right tools to decipher what can and can’t be trusted, the
FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
publishing industry’s products and skillsets have never been
more topical and should be urgently preserved. Publishers care
deeply about the authenticity and appropriateness of the
content we commission, produce and bring to market. The PA
will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that the UK
government promotes measures to support this.
The role of publishers
Demos is a free-thinking organisation and the PA had no editorial
control over the report published or its recommendations. The
recommendations to government deserve consideration by the
industry. These include a recommendation that the government
should work with and fund the publishing industry to develop
a “Citizen Editors” voluntary training scheme to help moderate
the online world. Also, that a “public service publishing ethos”
should prevail, affecting search engine optimisation of content, and
that technology firms should include a “reading mode” on smart
devices. The report also recommends zero-rating VAT on digital
publications, in line with the Axe the Reading Tax campaign.
The report shows the importance of tackling the potential
harms associated with online reading and content environments. It
also proves publishing’s ongoing role in navigating these challenges
for future generations. Bill Gates remarked more than 20 years
ago that “content is king”. The question for policymakers now
is – what kind of kingdom do they want it to be? ■
Dan Conway is director of external affairs at the Publishers Association.
15
 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

Guest of Honour: Further state

assistance comes in

Norway the form of translation

Norway’s programme includes a starry
line-up of authors. Nicholas Clee reports
Norway may have one of the smaller populations – just over
5.25 million – among Guest of Honour (GoH) countries at
Frankfurter Buchmesse, but it yields to few in literary
enthusiasm. According to the GoH organisers, Norwegians read
more than any other European nationality, getting through on
average 15.5 books a year. Eighty-eight per cent of Norwegians
read at least one book a year. Thirty-four per cent are regular
library borrowers, taking out on average 14.4 books a year.
Those dark winters may be to the book trade’s benefit.
Norwegian publishers release 3,700 titles a year – fewer than
come out in the UK each week. There are about 56,000 titles in
print. Publishers’ annual turnover is about £541m, meaning that
they generate considerably more sales for each title than their UK
counterparts manage. The government helps to boost this figure:
under the country’s book purchasing scheme, the Norwegian arts
council selects 600 titles each year for distribution to public
libraries, ordering up to 1,500 copies of each.
grants from NORLA
(Norwegian Literature
Abroad), the organiser
of the GoH programme.
Since 2004, NORLA
has contributed to the
funding of 5,200
translations of
Norwegian titles, into
65 languages. Guest of Honour funding comes from the
Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and
Fisheries, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and there is also
royal endorsement: Her Royal Highness Crown Princess
Mette-Marit is ambassador for Norwegian literature abroad.
Strong literary tradition
The country has a strong literary tradition. Henrik Ibsen’s
plays, including Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House, receive
regular performances on UK and US stages – indeed, Ibsen is
said to be the most frequently performed playwright in the
world after Shakespeare. Nobel Prize winner Knut Hamsun
may be less current nowadays, with his support for the
Nazis tending to put off many readers, but is nevertheless

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 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
recognised as an author of formidable stature. In the present
day, Jo Nesbo, author of a series of novels starring detective
Harry Hole, is one of the most widely read thriller writers
in the world, and has been translated into 50 languages. Per
Petterson has also been translated into 50 languages, and has
won both the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (now the
Booker International) and the International IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award (now the International Dublin Literary
Award). Jostein Gaarder’s 1992 novel Sophie’s World has
sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. In non-fiction,
Lars Mytting’s Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and
Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way was a surprise hit in
the UK market. Asne Seierstad has won acclaim and
bestsellerdom with her books The Bookseller of Kabul,
One of Us and Two Sisters. Lying somewhere between
categories are the “autofiction” works of the acclaimed,
though controversial, Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Knausgaard, Jo Nesbo, bestselling crime writer Karin Fossum,
Asne Seierstad, Per Petterson, and Linn Ullmann (author of
the acclaimed novel The Cold Song) will give a starry
flavour to the programme of events at the Norway pavilion.
Every Guest of Honour programme has a slogan, usually
somewhat vague in meaning. Last year, Georgia chose
“Georgia – Made by Characters”, which did have a specific
reference, to the 33 characters of the Georgian alphabet.
Norway has gone with “The dream we carry” – borrowed
FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
from a poem called “It Is That Dream” by Olav H Hauge
(1908-94); the first two lines are “It is the dream we carry/
That something wonderful will happen.” The poem
concludes: “and that one morning we’ll glide/into a cove
we didn’t know” – an apt metaphor for all those arriving in
Frankfurt in search of the unexpected.
Under this inspirational banner, events have been taking
place in Germany throughout 2019. Norway was the
country of focus at the Berlin Film Festival, and was the
partner at “jazzahead” in Bremen, the world’s largest jazz-
themed trade fair. The Museum Angewandte Kunst (MAK)
in Frankfurt has been redubbed the “House of Norway”
for the past several months. There are numerous cultural
activities taking place in the city during the week of the fair.
The centrepiece of Norway’s activities at the fair will be, as
always with the Guest of Honour, the pavilion (Forum, level
1). It has been designed by architecture firms Manthey Kula
and LCLA office, and is “a sort of sculpture park” with “an
imaginary landscape of table-like objects, which are inspired
by 23 poems and which invite guests to take a thematic
journey through Norwegian literature”. The “Books on
Norway” exhibition will display some 600 titles. The
programme features a “Freedom of Expression Hour” at 1pm
each day, as well as a “Green Hour” environmental series,
and during the happy hour at 5.30pm there will be electronic
sounds from a DJ going by the name of Olle Abstract. ■
17
 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

Embarrassed? Me? I’m pleased and proud

to have many readers in

Hell, yes Continental Europe.

Some read my books in

photo: Olivier Favre and West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village

English, but most buy
translations. I cherish
them all.
Four leading British authors – Ken That’s why I’m so
Follett, Jojo Moyes, Kate Mosse and Lee embarrassed by what’s
going on in the UK. We
Child – are staging a unique author tour seem to be sending an
in November to reassure their European unfriendly message to
our neighbours. “We
readers of their affection and friendship. don’t like you, and we
Four European countries are on the don’t want to be in
your club,” we say.
itinerary for the tour, which will see the Well, I don’t say it. I
authors appear on stage, talk about Ken Follett like my neighbours. I
lived for three years in Grasse, France, and loved it. There’s a
their work, answer questions, sign statue of me in the city of Vitoria-Gastiez in Spain – outside the
books and do interviews. Here, writing cathedral, like a saint! My favourite suits are made in Naples,
Italy. And my books sell more per head in Germany than any
exclusively for the Frankfurt Book Fair other country.
I’m not alone. Many of my fellow writers feel as I do,
Dailies, Ken Follett explains the mortified at the hostile attitude of Brits to the rest of Europe.
thinking behind the Friendship Tour. And we’re going to do something about it.

February 4th -9th

Hall 1, Taipei World Trade Center
Meeting with Asian Publishers
Registration Deadline: 2019.10.25 Guest of Honor: KOREA

18
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
I’ve teamed up with three colleagues, each of whom has
millions of readers in translation. They are Jojo Moyes, Kate
Mosse and Lee Child. We all want to tell our foreign readers
how much we value them, despite the impression given by
British politics. So we are going to do just that.
In November we’re heading off on the Friendship Tour. We
will visit four European countries, and in each one we will meet
readers and writers. We’ll appear on stage, talking about our
work and answering questions. We’ll sign a few books and do
some interviews.
Literature knows no borders
Like most writers, we’re vividly aware of how much we owe to
our predecessors in many countries. The first real novel was a
Spanish book, Don Quixote. The modern novel of adultery
owes everything to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. The kind of
story I write, in which world-historical crises are interwoven
with the personal destinies of fictional characters, was invented
by Tolstoy with War and Peace. Many authors who write about
Fascism, such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Martin Amis, do so in the
indirect manner of the Italian writer Giorgio Bassani, author of
the classic The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. I could play this
game for hours, but the point is clear: literature is international.
The same is true of most forms of art. The ferment of
Elizabethan England took place in a London full of asylum seekers
fleeing religious persecution in France and other countries. In the
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next century the cosmopolitan
Dutch Republic produced
the Golden Age of Dutch
Painting. African Americans
invented rock and roll, and
Jewish Americans invented
Hollywood. The greatest
artist of the 20th century
was a Spanish immigrant in Paris, Pablo Picasso.
A country that shuts its doors to foreigners will turn pale
and sickly for lack of the sunshine of new ideas. And I fear for
my country.
Right now London is probably the greatest cultural centre in the
world, and the city is thoroughly multi-ethnic, but can that last?
Outside London, so many of my countrymen dislike everything
foreign. They don’t want to hear strange languages spoken on
the street, they frown at people who look and dress differently,
they complain about the smell of exotic cuisine, and they read
stupid newspapers and believe fairy tales such as the one about
the European Union insisting that bananas must be straight.
We four can’t change that. We’re only storytellers. All we can do
is stand up and say that we aren’t part of it. We’ll be going to Milan,
Madrid, Berlin and Paris. I hope we’ll meet and talk to thousands
of readers. We have a simple message. We don’t believe that Britain
has no need of its neighbours. We want to remain European even
if our countrymen don’t. And we’re going on tour to say so. ■
FIND OUT MORE
FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR
HALL 6 STAND B133
19
03/10/2019 11:34
 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
An unconventional
publisher – Sunmark
Twenty-two years ago, the editor of Sunmark Publishing, a
little-known Japanese publisher, visited the Frankfurt Book
Fair for the first time, eager to seek out potential rights
partners, writes Teri Tan. To the bemusement of the exhibitors
he visited, none of the original publications in his catalogue
was of the picture book or manga graphic novel variety that
were then (and still are) Japan’s best-known segments.
Instead, his list offered titles such as Teruo Higa’s An Earth-
Saving Revolution and Shigeo Haruyama’s A Great Revolution in
the Brain World; the latter a 1995 sleeper hit that became Japan’s
second bestselling title in its publishing history at that time with
sales exceeding 4.1 million copies. But for the editor, the visit to
Frankfurt was a success: he saw the kind of titles out in the market
and potential partners he and his team could work with.
Tokyo-based Sunmark Publishing is now famous worldwide
as the original publisher of The Life-changing Magic of Tidying
Up, which is available in 42 languages and has three spin-offs
from author Marie Kondo. And since that fair back in 1997,
company president and publisher Nobutaka Ueki has signed
more than 1,500 contracts with overseas partners and launched
many other bestsellers, including Hiromi Shinya’s The Enzyme
Factor (now available in 20 languages),
Kazuo Inamori’s A Compass to
Fulfillment (five million copies sold;
seven languages) and Masaru Emoto’s
The Hidden Messages in Water (three
million copies sold; 26 languages).
Emoto’s title was released in 2005 by
Beyond Words Publishing, Sunmark’s
first US partner, and went on to spend
28 consecutive weeks on the New York
Times bestseller list. (That, however,
pales in comparison to Kondo’s title,
which spent 98 weeks, 68 of them at
number 1, on the same list.)
Over the years, Sunmark titles have
hit the charts, local and international,
many times with titles such as Yoshinori
Nagumo’s Being Hungry Makes You
Healthy (700,000 copies sold in Japan
since January 2012), Eiko’s Even the
Stiffest People Can Do the Splits (now in
17 languages) and Kenichi Sakuma’s The
Trunk Muscle Reset Diet (1.2 million
copies sold domestically).
So the December 2015 launch of
literary title Before the Coffee Gets Cold
from playwright Toshikazu Kawaguchi,
which revolves around time travel and
miracles, was a big surprise to overseas
partners who have gotten used to seeing
general wellbeing, inspiration and self-
20
WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
help/self-improvement
titles from Sunmark,
which is celebrating its
48th anniversary this
year. But the 180-degree
turn has paid off – the
title has sold 850,000
copies and 55,000
copies in Japan and
Taiwan, respectively,
and is now available in
16 foreign editions,
including English (from
Pan Macmillan) and
German (Droemer).
What makes
Sunmark’s success so
Nobutaka Ueki remarkable is that their
authors are mostly
“What makes unknowns – not literary
Sunmark’s success masters or big-name
celebs – that are
so remarkable is penning their books for
that their authors the first time. Ueki and
his team seem to have
are mostly unknowns the unerring ability to
– not literary masters pick winners, so much
so that Sunmark ranks
or big-name celebs.” number 1 in the
Japanese book industry
in the ratio of bestsellers to the number of books published.
For Ueki, who often speaks about “learning from natural
universal principles as the company philosophy” and “bringing
out the positive energy of the author to its fullest”, the success
of Sunmark is about “luck in an industry that is similar to
gambling”. Humility and wry humour aside, that “luck” has
always been unerringly bolstered by a well-crafted and broad-
based marketing strategy that accompanied each book launch in
its domestic market – from newspaper advertisements, banners
on trains and TV promotions to social media campaigns.
Last year, Ueki rolled the dice again by entering the character
business with Penguin Airplane Factory, which is essentially a four-
person team that he established. “We participated in the Licensing
Japan show at the Content Tokyo 2019 exhibition in April this
year, and kickstarted several rights negotiations. Our baby penguin
characters, Penta and Koharu, are becoming increasingly well-
known in Japan through our social media campaigns, and
soon you will see books, animations and merchandises
featuring these two lovely characters around the world.”
In a way, the choice of a penguin as his first character is most
apt. After all, Ueki believes in the universality of hopes and
dreams, and these aquatic flightless birds are often associated
with happiness and inspiration. (Remember that animated
feature Happy Feet?) Well, given Ueki’s track record in pulling
off one bestseller after another, this character venture may turn
out to be another big hit for Sunmark. And he will be the one
tap-dancing away in his Tokyo office! ■
 FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR

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OCTOBER 2019
What a Difference a Decade Makes
Once seen as a potential threat to the book, digital is fueling new
opportunities for publishers
By Andrew Richard Albanese
L
et’s take a moment to remember the heady digital days
of 2010, shall we? As publishers gathered in Frank-
furt in October of that year, e-book sales were still
growing, print was in decline, and audio was barely a
blip on the screen. The iPad had just debuted (it would
soon lead to a major price-fixing lawsuit against Apple and
five of the then Big Six publishers). And litigation was still
underway against Google over its library book-scanning
program. To put it mildly, simmering fears about the broader
future of the book business in the digital age loomed over the
industry and the Frankfurt Book Fair—all complicated by a
tough global recession.
But in 2019, as the last Frankfurt Book Fair of the decade
gets underway, those digital fears have given way to a sense
of confidence, even optimism, among publishers. As Penguin
The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
© frankfurt book fair
Random House CEO Markus Dohle proclaimed in 2017,
print books and e-books have found equilibrium. And while
e-book sales have declined, digital audiobooks are now lead-
ing the way to profitability for publishers’ digital businesses.
Perhaps most importantly, the publishing industry now sees
technology as more of an opportunity than a threat.
“We should not be afraid of people consuming other forms
of media,” said HarperCollins UK CEO Charlie Redmayne
in his opening keynote last year at the Markets, the Frank-
furt Book Fair’s opening preconference. “For us, this is a pos-
itive. Ultimately, it drives people back to the book. And con-
sumers have demonstrated that they are willing to pay for
content as long as it is the content they want, at the quality
they expect, easily accessible on the platform they want to
consume it on, and, just as importantly, at the right price.”
3
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT OCTOBER 2019

Which is not to say that the global book business is with-

out challenges. “Clearly, the physical book never did go

© ines bachor
away, nor was it ever going to,” Redmayne also told publish-
ers. “But, equally important, I’m not seeing any great resur-
gence across the market in terms of physical books. In fact, I
think the truth is that we have arrested decline.”
Arrested decline—that’s the backdrop against which the
publishing community gathers in Frankfurt in 2019. Print
books have reestablished their staying power. But the key
question very much on people’s minds as they head to this
year’s Frankfurt Book Fair is: how do publishers chart a
course to growth?
Digital will no doubt be a key part of any path to growth
for publishers—and in some sectors more than others. For
trade publishers, digital audio is the major source of opti-
mism. The format continues to surge, posting double-digit
growth rates for seven years straight now and bringing new
customers to the book business. So promising is the future of
the digital audio business that the sector now has a home of
its own at the Frankfurt Book Fair: Frankfurt Audio will
offer a new international marketplace for audio content,
located in Hall 3.1.
Notably, the rise of audio also presents an opportunity to
talk about new business models—most prominently, digital
subscription, the most popular way for consumers these days
to access content like movies, music, and, increasingly, audio-
books, through services offered by companies like Audible
and Storytel. With subscription access and streaming services The 2019 Global 50
CEO Talk to Feature
rapidly changing consumer expectations, what are the impli-
cations for the book business?
For academic publishing, which has already largely
embraced its digital future, the changes now underway are Netflix’s Kelly
more complex, as a funder-mandated shift to open access
publishing in Europe—known as Plan S—is roiling the
Luegenbiehl
industry. After years of slow progress, Plan S has put a dead- Go to the Frankfurt Pavilion on Wednesday,
line on the open-access transition, and pressure on publish-
October 16, from 2 to 3 p.m., to hear
ers to act swiftly.
And of course, one of the areas of greatest promise when it Netflix v-p for international originals discuss
comes to digital is in offering more efficiency and better ser- Netflix’s appetite for original international
vices to publishers, whether through AI, automation, or stories, and how the company looks to books
other tools that can improve workflow management. At the
for its productions and programming.
Frankfurt Book Fair, the show floor and the Business Center
will be loaded with vendors offering the newest, most inno- Luegenbiehl will be interviewed by a panel
vative technology in the industry. of editors from industry trade magazines
As usual, the professional program at the fair is loaded Livres Hebdo (France), Bookdao (China),
with great speakers, including a new speaker series, dubbed Buchreport (Germany), PublishNews (Brazil
Create Your Revolution, which will host talks with what
Frankfurt organizers call “global change makers.” Among
and Spain), and Publishers Weekly (U.S.),
the speakers announced so far are actress and producer Gina chaired by Ruediger Wishchenbart. The talk
Belafonte, Ethiopian web and mobile technologies developer is open to all registered book fair visitors, but
Betelhem Dessie, and Tea Uglow, creative director for Goo- seating is limited.
gle’s Creative Lab in Australia—valuable perspectives, all.■

4 www.publishersweekly.com
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 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT OCTOBER 2019

What’s the Story The Swedish company is leading a

booming digital audiobook subscription
With Storytel? market in Europe, but is the digital
subscription business sustainable for
By Carlo Carrenho publishers?

A
round the world, Sweden has become famous for
many things: Ikea, excellent meatballs, safe cars,
crime fiction, and, more recently, the inspiring teen
climate activist Greta Thunberg. You can add
another thing to the list: the audiobook subscrip-
tion market.
Pioneering Swedish company Storytel has shown a Viking-
like ambition to span the globe with its all-you-can-listen-to
monthly audiobook subscriptions. And by any measure,
the model has caught on with consumers. According to a
recent report, “Bokförsäljningsstatistiken,” copublished by
the Swedish Publishers Association and the Swedish Book-
sellers Association, subscription platform sales in Sweden
jumped to 19.8% of publisher sales in the first half of this
year, up from 15.8% in 2018, with only a small portion of
those sales representing e-books. And the Swedish book
trade magazine Svensk Bokhandel estimates that as much
as 30% of publishers’ revenues will come from digital sub-
scription platforms by next year—with digital audio leading
the way.
Storytel is not alone—the Bonnier Group’s Bookbeat, Aka-
demibokhandel Group’s Bokus Play, and Nextory are also
competing in the Swedish subscription market. But Storytel
is by far the market leader in Sweden, with an estimated
77% market share in 2018. And Storytel is the most global
of the services, now doing business in 18 territories, includ-
ing recent launches in Germany and Brazil.
How has the arrival of the digital-subscription model
impacted Swedish publishers? In its latest report, the Swed-
ish Publishers Association said that the overall book market
grew a healthy 5.1% in terms of units over the first six months
of 2018, with 24.3 million copies sold individually and via
digital subscription. But in terms of revenue, the market
decreased slightly, about 0.4%, to SEK 1.96 billion ($200
million), with stark differences among the various channels.
For example, bricks-and-mortar bookstores, supermarkets,
and online retailers reported that print book sales fell 7.6%
in terms of units and 5.2% in terms of revenues. Meanwhile,
© nicklas gustafsson
digital subscription grew a
robust 25.7% in units and
25.3% in revenues.
The most obvious con-
clusion one might draw
from those numbers, of
course, is that digital sub-
scription platforms are
cannibalizing publishers’
book sales. But is that the Carlo Carrenho
reality?
Not necessarily, says Swedish economist and researcher
Erik Wikberg, author of a just-published study called
“Ljudboken: Hur den digitala logiken påverkar mark-
naden, konsumtionen och framtiden” (The Audiobook:
How Digital Logic Influences the Market, Consumption and
the Future). “We should not automatically think of this as a
cause and effect,” he says. “Printed book sales were in decline
before the rapid growth of the subscription platforms. There
is more than one factor at play here. We must not forget that
many audiobook listeners also read printed books. Yet, we
also shouldn’t rule out that subscription platforms could be
a substitution rather than a complement to printed books in
the future.”
Wikberg believes it is a little too soon to draw conclusions
about the overall impact of digital audio subscriptions on
the book market as a whole. “This is still a very new con-
sumer behavior,” he cautions.
Patrik Övreby, purchasing director of Akademisbokhan-
deln, Sweden’s largest bookstore chain, agrees. “As we all
know, the numbers can vary quite a lot from year to year,
depending on the titles published,” Övebry says, adding that
his company has actually turned in a decent performance
so far this year. “During the first half of the year, contrary to
the rest of the market, our group increased sales of physical
books and gained substantial market share,” he points out.
That, of course, doesn’t mean cannibalization isn’t happening.
But it is a reminder, as Wikberg suggests, that the question

6 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
isn’t a simple one.
Meanwhile, another question comes to mind: why has
In Spanish Language
Sweden been the country to develop such a robust, flourish-
ing audiobook subscription market? Storytel, it turns out, Markets, Digital
Audio Surges
has a lot to do with it.
“It is fair to say that Storytel is the single actor that has
most changed the Swedish book market in the last few
decades,” Wikberg says. But, he adds, that change didn’t hap-
pen overnight. “They had rough years in the beginning, and There will be more than 10,000
showed a lot of persistence,” Wikberg says. “Storytel was
ahead of their time. But the penetration of smart phones and audiobooks in Spanish produced by
the growth of subscription models for TV, film, and music the end of 2019
played a crucial role in the company’s success.”
What can the rest of the world learn from the Swedish
experience with digital audio subscriptions? First and fore-
most, while they are popular with consumers and showing
rapid growth, there are questions about sustainability. By Javier Celaya
“First, none of the subscription services are really profit-
able, and they strategically prioritize growth before profit-
ability. It is very capital intensive. And we still don’t know
how profitable, if at all, this market will be,” Wikberg says.
“Second, the compensation model for publishers is a very
delicate matter. There is a big debate over whether subscrip-
tion platforms should have a revenue-share model or instead
pay fixed compensations on each consumed item.”
All of which means there is risk attached to embracing
these new platforms and models. Wikberg, however, suggests
that Swedish publishers should primarily be concerned Javier Celaya
about a more urgent matter, as more and more digital con-

tent now competes for a consumer’s attention.
“If I had a choice, I would primarily focus on the threats
related to how media consumption might move from books
to other products,” Wikberg says. “The share of Swedish
18-year-olds who read every day has dropped from 27% to
11% in just six years, and they are instead consuming other
kinds of digital media. This is my biggest worry right now.
Not just for players in the book market, but for our society
as whole.”
In that light, whatever challenges the digital audio sub-
scription business presents to the existing book market, these
platforms might still be more of a solution than a problem.
After all, as Wikberg points out, sounding a hopeful note, the
data show that digital audiobooks are expanding the audi-
ence for publishers.
“In volume, people are consuming more books than ever,”
Wikberg says, even if they are choosing to listen to them,
rather than read them. “That indicates that there is still an
underlying demand and strong interest in literature.”  ■ guage audiobooks are driving the growth for publishers.
Carlo Carrenho is the founder of PublishNews in Brazil and Spain
and works in business development at Word Audio Publishing
International in Sweden.
T
he increasing popularity of subscription entertain-
ment platforms such as Netflix, HBO and Spotify in
Spain and Latin America is rapidly transforming
consumers’ habits. And publishers are seeing the
effects in the book market.
According to the 2019 edition of “The Spanish Markets
Digital Report” compiled by Bookwire (the leading e-book
and audiobook distribution platform in the Spanish-lan-
guage market), unit download sales via platforms such as
Amazon, Apple, and Google continue to be the most rele-
vant sales channels for Spanish and Latin American publish-
ers, accounting for 80% of digital sales. But e-book and
digital audiobook subscription platforms like Scribd,
Nubico, Kobo, and Storytel have become increasingly signif-
icant for publishers, now accounting for 17% of publishers’
digital sales. (They accounted for 7% as recently as 2017.)
As in the rest of the global publishing sector, Spanish-lan-
Spanish-language audiobooks now have a firm foothold in
the market, evidenced by a 250% increase in the number of
titles on offer in this format in just the last three years. Accord-
ing to a new study, “Evolution of Spanish Audiobooks in the

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USA,” published in September by Dosdoce.com, there will be

more than 10,000 audiobooks in Spanish by the end of 2019,
10 times more than were available just a few years ago. Dos-
AI Goes from
doce.com estimates that, by the end of 2019, digital audio-
book revenues in the Spanish markets could reach $9 million,
Disruptive to
Imperative
up from previous estimates that put 2018 revenues between
$3.3 and $5.5 million. And there is more growth to come.
After all, more than 550 million people speak Spanish in more
than 20 countries worldwide. Publishers have looked on as
In 2018, the Hispanic market in the United States led the
way when it comes to the growth of Spanish-language audio- machine learning technology
books. But the arrival of more audiobook platforms in Spain
and Latin America—including Storytel, Scribd, Google, Spo- has developed—but now it’s
tify, and, coming in 2020, Audible—is creating new opportu-
nities. Indeed, the worldwide growth of sales for Span-
time to leap
ish-language audiobooks outside of North America, espe-
cially in Spain, Mexico and Colombia, represents a great
opportunity for more international publishers to export By Michael Groth
their audio content to Spanish-speaking markets. And the

O
Spanish and Latin American markets will soon begin to take
the lead in Spanish-language audiobook sales, due to the size ver the course of the last five years, AI, natural lan-
of their combined populations (close to 500 million people, guage processing (NLP), and machine learning
compared to the U.S. Hispanic market’s 50 million). (ML) have been much talked about, as well as tri-
So far, the data suggests publishers are seeing Latin Amer- aled and tested, in the publishing industry. These
ica as a particularly important market. As the Latin Ameri- technologies are often the focus of panel discussions
can audiobook market grows, more publishers are planning at conferences such as this one, discussions that have illus-
to produce audiobooks with Latin American accents instead trated how AI could be used for a variety of purposes: dis-
of the Castilian one from Spain. At the same time, part of covery, peer review, bestseller predictions, and, perhaps
this trend no doubt is based in consumer preference. In Latin most importantly, improving publisher efficiency.
America, consumers are more accepting of Castilian Spanish But, while a handful of publishers are experimenting
than Spaniards are of the various Latin American accents. with AI in various ways, and many are happy to hear about
Publishers learned this from marketing print books, and are the benefits, the technology is still far from reaching a tip-
taking the necessary steps to remove such barriers to audio- ping point. And one the first things publishers want to
books. Nevertheless, this increase in Latin-accent audio con- know when considering adopting AI-powered workflow
tent clearly demonstrates the interest of the international solutions is exactly
publishers to export audiobooks to the different countries of what can be gained—
Latin America, as well as to the Hispanic market in the and how much can
United States. be saved—by throw-
The growth in digital audio, meanwhile, represents an ing AI and other
even broader opportunity for Spanish language publishers. machine learning tech-
That’s because the growth of these new platforms and ser- nologies into the mix
vices are not just introducing readers in the region to a new of traditional edito-
reading alternative, but, research shows, they are creating rial and production
new readers and generating book sales, too. Several market workflows.
reports indicate that up to 30% of consumers under 35 What we at Cen-
reported listening to more than one audiobook a month via veo are finding is that
their smartphones. No doubt many of those listeners are a task that used to
readers—and potential book buyers—as well.  ■ take several days is
now possible to com-
Javier Celaya is a member of the executive board of the Digital plete within hours.
Economy Association of Spain and CEO and founder of Whether it involves
Dosdoce.com, an online portal that analyzes the impact of new automating a work- Michael
Groth
technologies in the publishing sector. flow to apply pre-set

10 www.publishersweekly.com
 f the Frankfu
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Don’t Miss The EU Digital Single Market Copyright Directive:

Licensing in the Digital Age
Sessions Wednesday 16 October, 11:30 to 12:00

Projekt DEAL and the Anatomy of a Transformative

Located at the Academic &
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(Hall 4.2 N101)
Agreement for Open Access Publishing
Wednesday 16 October, 14:00 to 14:30
Subscriptions, Rights & Open Access:
The Future of Transformative Agreements
Wednesday 16 October, 14:30 to 15:00

Better Data is Better Publishing (and Better Science, Too)

Thursday 17 October, 9:30 to 10:00
Visit us at
Hall 4.2 SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO EXPLORE TRENDS,
Stand E22 CHANGES AND CHALLENGES: copyright.com/blog
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT OCTOBER 2019

rules, fast-tracking high-quality manuscripts to the composi-

tion stage, or avoiding mandatory stops in different editorial
departments—a 30%–40% reduction in the overall time to
Transformative
publication is possible. For tasks that tend to be the most
labor- and time-intensive, such as copy editing, this could
Agreements,
Moving Targets
dramatically improve editors’ productivity.
And yet, as we have seen in questions asked during webi-
nars and panels Cenveo has recently hosted, there is still
some uncertainty among publishers surrounding AI and
NLP technology. Some are concerned that the quality of edi- With funder mandates expected
torial work will be sacrificed in a quest for speed; others
wonder how many jobs may be lost if the work is farmed out to drive ever-greater demand for
to computers; and some publishers are still not sure how the
technology actually works.
transformative agreements, what
But machine learning and AI are ready to jump from the do publishers of all shapes and
theoretical to the actual, and to become real, transformative
solutions for publishers. For example, today’s technology can sizes need to do to implement
track what actions copy editors and other professionals
perform over time, analyze the aggregate data, and make
them?
predictions based on this human behavior. It can accurately
automate the detection of mistakes in grammar, spelling,
By Rob Johnson
punctuation, word choice, and style, and recommend correc-
tions based on the rules it has learned from real-time analysis
of many users on a daily, or even hourly, basis. Most impor-
tantly, huge amounts of data can be processed in just a matter
of seconds. And the more a machine-learning system is used,
the better it gets.
For instance, Cenveo’s Smart Edit began with inputs from
various sources—dictionaries, editor experiences, and
specific publisher standards. But it improves with further
inputs from a range of academic, trade, and educational
publishers, nonprofit organizations, and other professional
publishing bodies using our editorial services. Such wide-
spread and increasing usage means the system can learn Rob Johnson

about and apply commonalities across all user actions,
resulting in higher-quality automation.
To date, many publishers remain cautious about imple-
menting AI tools on a significant scale. We get it. Change is
always difficult. And common misconceptions persist
around the technology’s perceived disruptive nature, along
with a reluctance to shake up models and structures that
have been in place for decades. As a result, the true potential
of this innovative technology has yet to be unleashed and we
are still in the testing-the-water phase.
But the time has arrived for publishers to cast away these
misconceptions and to learn more about AI’s power to
transform their day-to-day processes. In order for machine
learning to realize its true potential, much greater adoption
needs to take hold. And by understanding the significant
benefits to publishers and editors, the closer we will get to a
faster high-quality publishing model. ■ ent models of agreement. In addition, the entity charged with
Michael Groth is director of marketing for Cenveo Publisher Services.
I
n August 2019, Germany’s Projekt DEAL and Springer
Nature announced the world’s largest transformative
open access (OA) agreement, expected to result in more
than 13,000 articles by German scholars and scientists
being published OA per year. Such transformative agree-
ments are by no means new, of course. But as scientific pub-
lishers arrive in Frankfurt for this year’s book fair, they are
suddenly urgent in the aftermath of Plan S—the seismic
Europe-based initiative to shift science publishing to an open
access model within the next decade.
If one thing has become clear, it is that there is no one-size-
fits-all solution for Plan S compliance. A recent study by the
consultancy Information Power found that institutions in
45 countries have already entered into at least one type of
transformative agreement, and the study identified 27 differ-
registering and disseminating Plan S–compliant agreements,
the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges (ESAC) Initia-

12 www.publishersweekly.com
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
tive, already lists around 50 examples, involving 18 publishers.
What does Plan S mean in practice for scientific publishers
and other stakeholders, including library consortia, who must
manage this complex funder-mandated transition on a tight
deadline? Unique challenges for a range of different stakehold-
ers, observers say, and no easy answers.
“We’ve been pioneering transformative agreements since
2014,” explains Frank Vrancken Peeters, chief commercial
officer at Springer Nature, adding that such agreements are
“vital in enabling any uptake of open access at scale.” And
striking these deals, he says, takes time and effort. A transfor-
mative agreement can take years to negotiate. And, there is a
lot of work to be done. He estimates that less than 10% of
global library consortia currently have transformative deals
with publishers in place.
Trends, however, are emerging. So far, the two prevailing
forms of transformative agreements are “read-and-publish”
deals (in which the publisher receives a payment for research-
ers at an institution to both access its content and to publish
in its journals) and “publish-and-read” (in which the pub-
lisher receives payment only for publishing, and access is
strictly open access). In practice, most agreements will prob-
ably end up falling on different points on the continuum
between the two, depending on a range of factors, including
varying customer needs, governmental requirements, tax
requirements, and the mix of stakeholders and budgets
involved, not to mention the institution’s internal setup and
systems considerations.
Striking transformative agreements could be especially chal-
lenging for small and society publishers, says Stuart Taylor,
publishing director at the U.K.’s Royal Society. So much so
that, in the short term, the Royal Society is allowing authors to
self-archive manuscripts in institutional repositories and make
them available with a Creative Commons CC-BY licence. It’s
a stopgap, Taylor says, “to make sure that we don’t have to say
goodbye to any authors following Plan S.”
Reaching an agreement, meanwhile, is only part of the chal-
lenge: the end goal is to ensure a viable pathway to open access.
“It’s critical for publishers to adopt systems that work well,”
says Sandra Bracegirdle, head of content, collections and dis-
covery at the University of Manchester Library. “That means
testing them before launch and making sufficient resources
available to support institutions through the process,” she
explains. “Our experience suggests this doesn’t always hap-
pen.”
Jen Goodrich, director of product management at the Copy-
right Clearance Center (CCC), agrees that there are myriad
complexities involved. “There are funded authors, non-funded
authors, agreements with caps, agreements with varying pric-
ing by journal, variable discounts, and more,” she notes.
Goodrich speaks from experience—she oversaw development
of CCC’s RightsLink platform, which builds automated work-
flows that can, for example, identify submissions that might be
14 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
subject to a transformative agreement or other funder require-
ment. “Automation and rules-driven workflows for these
kinds of agreements are fully achievable, but they require
high-quality, standardized metadata,” she emphasizes, point-
ing to another key area where publishers will need to up their
game.
As if negotiating a transformative agreement wasn’t com-
plex enough, stakeholders are also aiming at a moving target.
It’s still uncertain exactly how “transformative” a transfor-
mative agreement must be in order to comply with Plan S, for
example, or whether the current Plan S provisions may
change as the 2024 deadline for these agreements approaches.
One thing appears certain: transformative agreements are the
pathway to complying with funder-mandated open access
policies, like Plan S, but that pathway is full of twists and
turns. “At this stage these deals are still evolving,” Vrancken
Peeters says. “And all parties are still learning.” ■
Rob Johnson is founder and director of Research Consulting, a
mission-driven business working to improve the effectiveness and
impact of research and scholarly communication. He was the lead
author of the 2018 edition of The STM Report, which provides an
overview of scientific and scholarly journal publishing.
For more on the impact of transformative
agreements, the Copyright Clearance Center
will host two seminars on the subject.
Projekt DEAL and the Anatomy of a Transformative
Agreement for Open Access Publishing is set for
Wednesday, October 16, from 2 to 2:30 p.m. at the
Academic & Business Information Stage (Hall 4.2 N101).
Among the topics, the discussion will look at Wiley’s recently
announced agreement with Projekt DEAL.
Panelists include Roy Kaufman, managing director, business
development and government relations at CCC; Ralf Schimmer,
director of scientific information provision at the Max Planck
Digital Library; Deirdre Silver, associate general counsel v-p
of legal and research at John Wiley & Sons.
The Future of Transformative Agreements: Subscrip-
tions, Rights & Open Access will immediately follow from
2:30 to 3 p.m. This session will look more broadly at the role
that transformative agreements will play in academic pub-
lishing market in the years to come.
Panelists include Tasha Mellins-Cohen, director of publishing
with the Microbiology Society; Mark Seeley, public policy
consultant at SciPubLaw; Susie Winter, director of communi-
cations and engagement in research with Springer Nature;
James Milne, senior vice president, Journal Publishing Group,
American Chemical Society.
CCC’s Christopher Kenneally will moderate both sessions.
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 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Fast or Slow, Digitization Does Go On
Emerging technologies, new business models, and changing market
needs are going to require unique digital solutions and publishing ideas
By Teri Tan
I
n publishing, digitization has so far been a nonlinear,
two-steps-forward-one-step-back process that is further
complicated by the different speeds and levels of adop-
tion within the industry. It requires a wide range of solu-
tions that can address some fundamental and persistent
issues. Here’s a look at the current landscape of possibilities
and players.
Adding Machine Intelligence
into the Mix
The application of robotic process automation (RPA) using
AI, machine learning (ML), and natural language processing
(NLP) in production workflows, for instance, is nothing new.
However, these cognitive technologies are now being put to
work in new areas that benefit publishers.
Content discoverability is one such area. “The current
search-and-discover functionality in the market is key-
word-driven, whereas our solutions harness the powers of AI,
ML, NLP, and Big Data,” says Uday Majithia, assistant v-p of
technology, services, and presales at Impelsys. “AI will enhance
discoverability. It will help the machine read and understand
the growing amount of information available on the web
while also drawing out the persona of a user to make real-time
recommendations. So we are looking at two parts here—a
semantic-powered automated metadata tagger and a user pro-
filer—which are among several AI- and ML-driven function-
alities that have emerged from our new Innovation Lab.”
Another promising area for AI applications is manuscript
evaluation. “This involves extracting concepts to analyze for
novelty, matching papers to reviewers, and even matching
papers to journals,” says Mike Groth, marketing director at
Cenveo Publisher Services, adding that “another potential
application is in product development, where AI mines the
publisher’s body of work to aggregate content fragments
across different content types and media and bundle that into
new collections by topic.” (A case study on a machine-gener-
ated book from Springer’s Beta Writer project will be shared
with attendees at a panel on October 18 at the fair.)
Cenveo is bringing ML to editorial tasks with the goal of
“adding value to the human decisions. With ML, the error
rates become lower over a period of time while the accuracy
and speed get higher,” says Francis Xavier, v-p of operations,
adding that “once ML reaches the tipping point, the learning
16 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
and reasoning becomes exponentially higher than a human
being’s. Our team is now establishing rule sets that will allow
the implementation of high-quality automation in which the
system performs 90% of the work and the staff contributes
the remaining 10%. This will bring us closer to near-instan-
taneous publishing.”
How much time can Cenveo’s tools save? Xavier says, “In
a traditional workflow, a manuscript goes through various
departments and has a mandatory stop at every stage, which
is time-consuming as it regularly gets stuck in a department
waiting for somebody to attend to it. With AI, the system
moves the manuscript along and sets dynamic prioritization
and schedules that improves speed anywhere between 30%
and 40%. So what used to take several days can now be
completed within hours.”
At Newgen KnowledgeWorks, ML helps the team contin-
uously improve and upgrade its automated composition
tools. Using InDesign and LaTeX helps the team produce
always-improving outputs with predictable consistency and
speed. “Even within our internal system, we are now able to
apply the principles of NLP and sentiment analysis to ensure
that our quality management systems capture potential issues
early,” says company president Maran Elancheran. “This in
turn enables our auditing team to intervene and take preven-
tive action the moment any potential issue is identified.”
Across Newgen’s project management frameworks, intelli-
gent scheduling tools are helping manage workloads and
prioritize tasks according to the unique requirements and
history of each piece of content. “This tool ensures that the
machine takes on the strain of pushing content to the next
stage of the workflow. Such tools are helping us continuously
drive down turnaround time while improving efficiency,”
Elancheran explains.
Compro Technologies is putting cognitive technologies to
work on educational products. It “offers a modern-day data
platform with multiple tools built around analytics to handle
massive amounts of learning data,” explains senior v-p Ravin
Minocha. Intelligent recommendations for learning materi-
als and assessments (based on learner proficiency, prefer-
ences, and past performance), advanced ML models (based
on complex knowledge graphs), and skill mapping and
evidence-based analytics (for scores and answers) are among
the many features in ComproDLS Engage, the company’s
OCTOBER 2019
new software-as-a-service (SaaS) learning platform. Another
product, ComproDLS Leonardo, leverages the same plat-
form for truly interactive spreadsheet-based training and
assessments powered by algorithms that provide an intelli-
gent grading engine.
PageMajik is working to use AI to automate publishers’
routine tasks. It’s the only publisher-focused platform that
has been invited to be a part of the Intel AI development
group. COO David Brake says, “We know that AI is going to
be a part of our lives, impacting almost every industry, and is
rapidly evolving. Our partnership with Intel has put us in
touch with some of the most innovative practitioners in the
AI world, and we are learning from other industries as we
develop future solutions for publishers.”
Content management systems (CMS), for instance, are
ripe for AI improvement. “Most CMSs are one-dimensional
and static, but we are betting on publishers wanting to do
more with their content and metadata than simply categoriz-
ing and storing them,” says Brake. “This is where AI, content
in context, and workflow collaboration play such an import-
ant role. PageMajik’s CMS functions are a part of a multidi-
mensional approach to solving routine but critical issues for
publishers and content developers.”
Scott Winner, CEO of Ingenta, says that, while AI, ML, and
NLP “have considerable capabilities—and are applied in
selected Ingenta workflows—we are also aware that the uses
and results in many specific situations are yet to be proven.
With any technology, you have to weigh the benefits and
unintended consequences. Take voice technologies as an
example. They can be extremely frustrating when you’re
placing a call to a call center and the technology is struggling
to understand your problem. This type of NLP can be either
very helpful or hurtful. At every turn, we need to consider
how much these technologies benefit our clients and con-
sumers. How well do they process language, and are the
companies that are using them doing it well?”
New Possibilities for Data and
Content
Even though conversations regarding digital solutions have
moved on to sophisticated topics involving AI, ML, and
NLP in recent months, some basic questions (and challenges)
persist.
“Many of these boil down to time, effort, and investment.
It is not that publishers are not ‘converting’ content,” says
Marianne Calilhanna, v-p for marketing at Data Conversion
Laboratory. “It is more that content structure and semantic
enrichment are constantly evolving based on the content
supply chain. A case in point: publishers who produce con-
tent that must meet the standards of such organizations as
ASTM, IEEE, and AWWA now have a new standard—NISO
STS—for their content type. Moving from JATS XML to this
new standard makes sense, but the whole premise is going to
The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
require time and money, and that is a challenge.”
Change is always hard, adds Calilhanna. “It takes time
away from the routine activities that already use up much of
the time available. A large publisher who has acquired sev-
eral other companies over the years, for instance, will find it
immensely valuable to normalize the content acquired and
offer a single database for discoverability and monetization.
But that requires an investment in terms of time and money.
And when such an effort was not undertaken for decades or
longer, then the inertia is a tough thing to get past.”
However, Calilhanna is seeing more efforts in content
structure and semantic enrichment in recent months. “Pub-
lishers are revisiting projects that were previously considered
too expensive as little as four years ago. Some are revisiting
semantic enrichment projects in light of new understanding
of content discoverability and searchability.”
This is a smart strategy, according to Matt Turner, chief
strategy officer at MarkLogic. “Data needs to be seen as a core
asset and a critical area of investment—and this is one area
that publishers can learn from other industries such as phar-
maceutical, health care, finance, and manufacturing, where
being data-centric is now accepted as a critical success factor.”
“True digital transformation is still a long-term objective
across much of the publishing industry,” he adds. “Getting
books and articles online and accessible is one part of going
digital. But what comes next? What should be the priority? At
MarkLogic, we believe that organizations that invest in data
will lead the digital transformation.” He explains that his cli-
ents such as Springer Nature, Pearson, and the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development have used data
to meet changing consumer and market needs. “They show
what can be done and how using the data hub approach can
make the process easier. More importantly, it gives these orga-
nizations the flexibility needed to adapt in the ongoing process
of digital transformation in order to become truly digital.”
This involves not just organizing data but also being able
to connect it to customers’ needs and, potentially, interact
with the customer on a machine level. “The usage of data
mining tools, for instance, is one solution, and this has cre-
ated and powered Springer TDM and Dow Jones DNA,
which use MarkLogic’s database as their data hubs,” Turner
says, pointing out that, “given the growing importance of
data sharing, and the rise of machines—not people—as the
actual readers of the content, more flexibility and better data
is required. Organizations need to make a commitment to
invest in data in order to succeed.”
There are challenges in the existing learning technology
landscape for textbook publishers, according to Gurdial
Singh, co-founder of Compro Technologies. “In some cases,
the content is built and packaged to work in specific learning
management systems such as Blackboard, Canvas, or Moo-
dle, which is restrictive, as publishers cannot innovate or
leverage new or custom learning models. Then there are
continued on p. 20
17
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continued from p. 17
in-house learning platforms developed by large publishers
that require massive and continuous technology investment,
which also limits the ability to interoperate with other LMS
platforms. What the industry needs is a SaaS and cloud-
based learning environment, and this is where our Compro-
DLS platform comes in.”
Singh predicts the current trend of course content delivery
through mobile apps will continue. “We expect to see
voice-recognition technologies grow in importance in subjects
where students need to demonstrate language proficiency or
competency. The adoption of advanced technologies will cer-
tainly improve student learning and lessen the workloads of
teachers and instructors,” he adds, pointing out that, as digital
technology becomes more complex and sophisticated, “there
will be a move away from relying on in-house engineering and
architect teams, which have proven to have limited success.
Instead, publishers need to partner with vendors who special-
ize in these complex technologies and can adapt them for spe-
cific educational applications. This will allow publishers to
increase—and focus on—their investments on content and
pedagogy.”
Working Out Better Workflows
Uli Klopotek, CEO of Klopotek, agrees. By putting “stan-
dard services such as processes related to fulfillment and
asset rights acquisitions into the hands of their IT provider,”
he says, publishers will free up time and energy for what they
do best. “They will use their own IT capabilities for invent-
ing new channels, models, and products instead of keeping
an ERP [enterprise resource planning] system running.”
Many large publishing houses currently run many IT sys-
tems in different locations that are probably doing the same
job, Klopotek observes. “Digitization has created an oppor-
tunity to run all these different units using just one central-
ized system. Workflows are, of course, individual and special
for every business unit, but a centralized information storage
and processing system will achieve cost savings and process
harmonization, and avoid redundant data maintenance pro-
cesses. For us, this means that we will be much more than a
software provider.”
Publishers are no longer asking for large, full-scale enter-
prise resource solutions in one huge, single module, says
Wolf-Michael Mehl, managing director of Klopotek. “Instead,
they are asking for flexible, configurable systems to support
business processes in certain areas. At the same time, publish-
ers no longer want to run IT systems in-house but are now
asking for service providers to provide both software and
operational services—and the software company of their
choice is expected to be able to flexibly adjust the software
support to their changing needs.” Going forward, Mehl
expects publishers to ask IT partners to offer service pack-
ages that include fulfillment services and royalty manage-
ment services.
20 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
Klopotek’s products can be tailored to existing workflows
or used to improve them. “Stream provides a high-quality
UX, a high level of state-of-the-art integration options, and
extremely powerful features to create workflows as well as
to check and ensure data quality, which will result in lower-
ing operational costs,” explains Mehl, pointing out that
“Stream unlocks a range of potentials in the area of integra-
tion, say, with web platforms and delivery platforms.”
Brake, of PageMajik, sees an opportunity to help publish-
ers—even those with existing in-house tech teams—improve
their workflows. Publishing companies, he says, have “tradi-
tionally been internally structured in silos, often operating
with systems that do not play nice with each other. And those
workflows will change. Our ability to help people determine
optimal workflows, and implement the relevant technology to
support that workflow using an agile and iterative approach,
is an advantage. We can be the in-house tech team’s best friend
in creating a sustainable solution,” Brake adds.
Technology Jitters and New
Concerns
Publishers can be uneasy about embracing AI-driven solu-
tions. “There are occasional concerns about quality, worries
that computers will replace editors instead of just making
them more productive—or it can be as simple as publishers
not fully understanding how it works,” says Groth, of Cenveo
Publisher Services. His company recently co-presented a
webinar with Danish technology company Unsilo, which is
conducting an industrywide survey on perceptions, hin-
drances, and uptakes on AI.
Starting any new relationship involves building trust and con-
fidence, which is easier said than done, says Elancheran, of
Newgen KnowledgeWorks. “While our platforms and solu-
tions are often transformative for publishers, we never underes-
timate the confidence that production and editorial staff need to
have to risk switching vendors and workflows. Even with exist-
ing clients, introducing new workflows and efficiencies can be
worrisome when processes are already established and tested.”
Approaching potential or existing clients with a new plat-
form or idea is not for the fainthearted or the impatient, says
Nizam Ahmed, founder and CEO of DiTech Process Solu-
tions and 3ClicksMaster. “For the publishers, the jitters are
many, including concerns about the amount of investment
required, the length of the learning curve, and disrupted pro-
duction—and these are all understandable.” Ahmed says that
publishers who have “developed their in-house workflows
and isolated tools are reluctant to try new things. So convinc-
ing these publishers to adopt a new and better technology
takes a lot of time and patience.”
Publishers can also have preconceived ideas about certain
software and its applications. “Many in the humanities seg-
ment, for instance, tend to think that a platform designed
with the STM segment in mind will not work for them and
continued on p. 22
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The CSP engine is built around the FOUR Cs—content, context, collaboration, and
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 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
continued from p. 20
vice versa,” says Ahmed. “But that is not always the case, and
it is definitely not so with our 3ClicksMaster platform, which
is designed as an automated and configurable cross-media
publishing solution for a range of publishing requirements.”
Ultimately, apprehension and skepticism about new tech-
nologies are par for the course. “We experienced this when the
publishing industry moved gradually from print to digital,”
says Majithia, of Impelsys. “But all of us now agree that digital
is not a choice; it is inevitable. No forward-looking organiza-
tion can discount the power of these emerging technologies
that can bring about competitive advantages and operational
efficiencies. While the benefits may not be immediate for some,
the perception will change as more solutions built on these
technologies come in and show obvious results.”
There are new questions now arising that technology com-
panies and publishers will have to answer. Plan S, which
requires all publications about publicly funded research in
Europe to be published in open-access journals, continues to
be a hot topic. It has caused commotion and criticism within
scholarly publishing circles.
For Majithia, “maintaining the bottom line while adher-
ing to Plan S will require some tweaks in the publishing
business models. These possible models are being debated
right now. But, while there may be some turbulence because
of Plan S, journals—open-access or subscription-based—still
need to be published. None of them will disappear, and neither
will the technology that supports journal distribution and
fulfillment.”
In the meantime, Majithia suggests that “publishers consider
3ClicksMaster
For founder and CEO Nizam Ahmed of
DiTech Process Solutions, building a
cloud-based, automated cross-media pub-
lishing platform was a no-brainer given the
rising demand in publishing for shorter turnaround times,
higher quality, and lower production costs. The result is
3ClicksMaster (3CM), now a separate company owned by
Ahmed, which deploys technology to minimize human inter-
vention in preparing content for publication while guaran-
teeing top-quality output.
The 3CM platform unifies three separate processes: cre-
ation (which covers copy editing and XML conversion),
design (auto-flowing existing XML into InDesign or prede-
termined DTDs), and publishing (creating print PDF, XML,
ePub3, and HTML5 on the fly). Customizable, flexible, and
editable, the platform is designed for creating web, print, and
mobile content. It also offers a module, JMaster, for end-to-
end journal publishing requirements.
“JMaster allows the users to publish their articles at the
22 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
diversifying their offerings by repurposing existing journal
content into other derivatives of research publications such as
digital course modules, microlearning modules, simulations,
and animations. Along with a redefined business model, repur-
posing content will also help them monetize their offerings.”
Winner, of Ingenta, notes issues surrounding contracts,
rights, and royalty management that have been brought up by
the rise of new publication models. “Let’s consider the digital
unit. You can say that it is a book or a journal. But what about
an article within that journal, or a graph or data set that goes
with it, or a paragraph or chapter that you own and want to
manage as a publisher? Additionally, the way older content
was set up in a repository may not be aligned with the way
that content is now understood. If someone leases a book
rather than buys it, how do you define that in your system?
Leveraging all these models is a complex task.”
Recreating the experience of reading a physical book in a
digital world is another challenge. “When you lose the sense
of location within a text, or the positioning on the page, you
change the experience,” Winner adds. “Reading a physical
book has always been a sensory experience—you can feel and
hear the pages turning, and even smell the paper and binding.
If I’m reading digitally, and really like the book, I will often
buy a high-quality print copy so I can better enjoy it. We need
better ways to bridge the gap between traditional and digital
reading, and to preserve the best aspects of the experience.”
The following pages highlight what 11 digital-savvy
companies are doing to help publishers navigate the digital
landscape. ■
click of a button,” says Ahmed, pointing
out that “seamless journal publishing is
enabled by features such as automated
DOI generation, online copy editing,
author packet generation, automatic
issue building, and email notifications for
production managers and authors. A math-type editor for
equations and formulas is also included.” Currently, JMaster
can process approximately 500 pages per minute, produce
publications with highly complex layouts, and handle Uni-
code data for multilingual publications.
Ahmed says that 3CM’s tools enabled much-needed
changes for one client, a large STM book and journal pub-
lisher that had struggled to achieve its output goals with 3B2
software. “The publisher’s production costs have been
reduced by half because 3CM requires minimal human inter-
vention, and their editors are able to generate 100% auto-
mated first proofs that dramatically reduce the turnaround
time,” Ahmed adds. “The net result is that their books and
journals can now be designed and disseminated in a couple
of hours instead of days.”
continued on p. 26
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Building Digital
Ecosystems at
Compro Technologies
Helping ed tech innovators create prac-
tical and affordable learning technol-
ogy solutions is what Compro Tech-
nologies does best. “We have helped
organizations of varying sizes—from
start-ups to multinational educational
publishers—in imagining, developing,
and deploying award-winning digital
products for millions of students and
educators in the past two decades,” says
Gurdial Singh, who co-founded the
company with Kanwarjit Chadha.
Together, they have drawn on those
experiences to create a cloud-based dig-
ital ecosystem, ComproDLS, that aims
to help publishers in their digital trans- Matt Gambino, founder of Propel Skills
formation. There are currently three Development, will present two talks on
ComproDLS solutions.
main product lines powered by the
ComproDLS learning stack: Engage (a SaaS/cloud-based
learning platform), Leonardo (a new solution for spread-
sheet-based training and assessments), and Enterprise (a
suite of services and tools for building customized learn-
ing platforms).
ComproDLS Engage provides content creators and
textbook publishers with a cost-efficient platform for cre-
ating and delivering rich digital learning experiences. “It
enables the assembly of traditional content, including
books, assessments, interactives, and rich media,” says
senior v-p Ravin Minocha, adding that Engage is specifi-
cally targeted at smaller and midsize educational publish-
ers with limited staff and financial resources to develop
their own custom learning platforms. “Unlike traditional
digital tools, Engage can be used to create courseware and
digital learning solutions without requiring significant
technical expertise or collaboration between the product
manager and an engineering team for every change that is
needed.” Since Engage was created from the ground-up as
a modern mobile-first solution, the front-end layer can be
easily customized to suit client preferences and target
markets. “Next, we are looking into building enhanced
tools for digital-first publishing, together with new fea-
tures such as data intelligence, personalization, and gam-
ification,” Minocha says.
ComproDLS Leonardo helps online learners interact
with quantitative problems without leaving an e-course to
open Microsoft Excel. “It offers true interactivity by enabling
24 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
spreadsheet-based activities to be directly
embedded within learning content,”
Singh explains. Leonardo allows con-
tent from Excel to be used seamlessly in
the course authoring process. It also
automatically grades spreadsheet-based
assignments, saving instructors signifi-
cant time and effort. And, for learners,
Leonardo provides a unified online UX
that closely mimics a typical spread-
sheet, preparing learners for real-life sce-
narios. “For Leonardo,” Minocha says,
“we are considering adding features
such as: intelligent scoring rules with tol-
erances, ranges, and permutations by
using AI/NLP applications; grading and
reporting enhancements for deeper
insights; and contextual skill remedia-
tion feedback. We are also working on algorithmic varia-
tions to eliminate plagiarism by giving each learner a unique
problem to solve.”
ComproDLS Enterprise allows mostly large and digitally
mature publishing clients to build customized learning
platforms. It was used by one of Europe’s largest textbook
publishers for English-language training to launch a
next-generation environment for teachers and learners.
The entire project, including design, development, and
release, was completed within ten months.
The ComproDLS platform, Singh says, is able to pivot
quickly to keep up with market changes, which has a
major impact on time to market. “What used to take years
to develop can now be done through our platform in
months—and that is a powerful differentiator between
our platform and others in the market. We have leveraged
our past experiences and collaborations within the pub-
lishing industry to develop an end-to-end engineering and
development capability.”
Matt Gambino, founder of Propel Skills Development, will
present two talks focused on ComproDLS Engage and Leonardo,
respectively, at Hall 4.2’s EDU Stage (C94) on Wednesday,
October 16: “Big E-Learning for Small Publishers: Producing
On-Brand Digital Edition Courseware” at 10:30 a.m. and
“Producing High-Touch E-Learning for Accounting and
Engineering Courses” at 3 p.m. More information on Compro
solutions is available from booth C91 in the same hall.
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 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
continued from p. 22
Another client, this one in Germany, uses 3CM for trade
and business books instead of the usual STM and scholarly
texts. The 3CM team already had tools in place to handle the
publisher’s multiple file formats, but it had additional needs
because 70% of its books are in German. Ahmed’s team
developed a German base dictionary to take care of hyphen-
ation issues and speed up the production process.
To date, the 3CM platform offers four additional custom-
ized solutions aside from JMaster: Bookish (for STM books),
DigiCon (for converting between digital formats), School-
Master (for texts used in K-12 education), and Travelfy (for
travel guides). “All our solutions share two major character-
istics—being device-agnostic and cloud-based—which
allows users to access and work on the platform from any-
where at any time,” says Ahmed, whose 3CM client roster
also includes several global nonprofit organizations.
Check out demos of the 3ClicksMaster platform at booth J71 in Hall 4.2.
Cenveo
Publisher
Services
Cenveo is highlighting two solutions at this Frankfurt Fair:
its cloud-based publishing ecosystem Smart Suite 2.0 and the
recently launched Cenveo Learning platform.
Smart Suite 2.0’s name refers to the AI and NLP behind its
four modules: Smart Edit (for pre-editing, copy editing, and
conversions), Smart Compose (the production engine),
Smart Proof (for capturing edits while allowing valid XML
round-tripping), and Smart Track (which has an easy UI that
logs all content transactions).
The Smart Edit module has extensive AI/NLP capabilities.
“Publishers are typically reluctant to let go of editing because
that is the main process during which they can add value to
the content,” explains marketing director Mike Groth. “By
introducing AI and NLP into this tool, the editorial quality
becomes better over a period of time with rules established
based on tracking prior human interventions. This ability to
automate changes from a wide knowledge base means that
all contributors—for example, non-native-English speaker
authors—are able to turn out a quality product faster.”
Smart Suite’s new Smart Reporting feature exists to assist
publishers in controlling quality. “The reports generated via
the Smart Track dashboard displays the results of the valida-
tions in the process and highlights the areas that require
human intervention, including: noncaptured styles, contex-
tual copyediting errors, mismatches, missing references, and
typographical changes,” explains Groth. “Every element in
the book or journal is validated against the rule sets in the
process and reported as a proof of compliance.”
While Smart Suite is for publishers, Cenveo Learning is all
about applying digital learning best practices in education
26 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
and corporate learning programs. Employing a team of
learning professionals with deep experience in instructional
systems and technical design, Cenveo Learning has created a
robust end-to-end offering for both educational and corpo-
rate learning programs.
“Learners today have evolved alongside technology and
expect robust digital experiences, on demand and on any
device. But we found that interactive courses have not
entirely kept up with the way students now live and work,”
says Groth, adding that “education publishers want to
embrace this transformation in order to best serve teachers
and students. But it is challenging to identify which technol-
ogy will actually make an impact. So we advocate for the
latest digital solutions that have a real impact on learning,
ROI, and accessibility in the classroom and beyond.”
Cenveo’s solutions “include blended learning, multidevice
access, microlearning, rapid authoring, gamification, and
AR/VR,” says Groth. More information can be found in
Cenveo’s new report, “Six Approaches to Effective Digital
Learning: How Emerging Technologies Are Transforming
Education and Corporate Learning,” available at its booth.
Visit Cenveo at booth L37 in Hall 4.2. And join marketing director Mike
Groth, along with panelists from HighWire and Springer Nature, for a panel
entitled “AI 2.0: Machine-Generated Content, Intelligent Automation, and
the Future of Academic Publishing” at Hall 4.2’s Academic and Business
Information Stage on Friday, October 18, at 10 a.m.
Data
Conversion
Laboratory
Data and content transformation services and solutions have
been Data Conversion Laboratory’s (DCL) business since
1981. “Where we excel is working with organizations that
have complex content and data structure needs, or need dig-
itization and conversion for complex content, including data
from form extraction, web harvesting, and semantic enrich-
ment,” says v-p for marketing Marianne Calilhanna, adding
that “publishers need structured content to feed downstream
systems, including print, and to enable discoverability.”
Content conversion is no longer just about switching from
one output format to another, Calilhanna says. “Conversion
needs are becoming more complex in the present-day pub-
lishing ecosystem. For instance, it is important for a publisher
to break down or analyze collections of content and data on
a periodic basis. Such a process identifies redundant content
to streamline management, improves data consistency, and
creates an authoritative version of the available content. This
is one service that DCL has been offering to help publishing
clients to reuse and repurpose existing content.”
A merger or acquisition means a publisher must integrate
vast amounts of disparate content and data into its corpus.
“The only manageable way to effectively evaluate, standard-
continued on p. 28
sales@newgen.co
www.newgen.co

Services and Solutions

• Business Solutions 10
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Analytics
01
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• Technology Solutions Collaborative issue compilation
02
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• Digital Marketing Solutions 06 04

Author / Editorial Office portal
Converse with external systems
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ACCESSIBILITY
INITIATIVE
Newgen can improve the accessibility of your content for
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 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
continued from p. 26
ize, and enrich vast data collections involves AI and other
automated processes. DCL comes in with proven workflows
to help in data standardization with semantic enrichment,”
adds Calilhanna, pointing out that data standardization
improves search capabilities and increases content coverage
and link density across bibliographic collections, and that the
semantic enrichment leverages third-party databases such as
CrossRef, PubMed, and FundRef.
DCL’s expertise and automation were critical to a project
involving Elsevier’s Scopus database, which is the world’s larg-
est abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed litera-
ture, comprising scientific journals, books, and conference
proceedings from as far back as 1996. The goal was to
improve Scopus’s search capabilities by increasing its content
coverage and link density.
“Our team started by onboarding, inventorying, and pro-
cessing millions of bibliographic records with varying levels
of structure and quality through our fully automated 24/7
custom technology stack,” says Calilhanna. “Once the data
was normalized, the automated process transformed and
enriched XML records from various archives and formats to
match Elsevier’s XML schema.” Additional workflows were
also created to match, verify, and overlay related rich content
from other citation databases.
Advances in NLP technology, Calilhanna adds, “allow con-
tent to be structured automatically and results in multidi-
mensional content for better search, filter, and interactivities
as well as deeper links. DCL has the conversion tools and
solutions based on the latest technologies to do just that for
publishing clients.”
For more information on DCL and its solutions, drop by the MarkLogic/Data
Conversion Laboratory booth K35 in Hall 4.2.
Impelsys
Soon after Impel-
sys launched its
iPC Scholar plat-
form with multiformat content support in April 2018, inqui-
ries about adding features to enable it to be used for continu-
ing medical education and continuing professional develop-
ment (CME and CPD) for medical professionals started to
flow in. “With version 2.0, which we are demoing at this
Frankfurt Fair, professional associations and education pro-
viders will have the ability to manage and offer continuing
education credits and certification programs,” says Uday
Majithia, assistant v-p of technology, services, and presales,
adding that “learners can now earn credits and certificates for
the courses that they complete.”
An intuitive UI with well-defined workflows to manage
journal hierarchies has also been added to iPC Scholar. “Our
journal reader, in both its online and offline versions, now
supports JATS, which is an XML format used for online sci-
28 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
entific publishing,” explains Majithia. “The iPC Scholar plat-
form supports seamless rendering of all content types, includ-
ing e-books, journals, digital courseware, videos, audio files,
documents, and PowerPoint presentations. The search and
analytics functionalities, available across all these content
types, enable enhanced discoverability and richer user-behav-
ior insights.”
Adoptions of iPC Scholar are accelerating. An international
journal subscription agency for academic libraries, for
instance, now hosts more than 355 journals on iPC Scholar to
offer single-source access. Another adoption by a North
American medical society has produced an online university
that supports a blended model of lifelong professional educa-
tion for physicians, nurse practitioners, and clinical support
staff.
But the bigger news is the launch of Impelsys Innovation
Lab. “This is about enabling publishers to build competitive
advantages by leveraging emerging technologies,” Majithia
explains. “Over the last decade or more, the digital revolu-
tion has taken scholarly publishing by storm, and we have
helped publishers and education providers in their digital
transformation journey in our role as technology experts.
Now that early-mover advantages have diminished and dis-
ruptions are settling, the question on everyone’s mind is,
‘What’s next and where do we go from here?’ This lab is our
way of addressing such questions and building meaningful
technology solutions for the publishing community.”
For a start, Impelsys will be working on emerging and dis-
ruptive technologies such as AI, Big Data, cloud computing
services, IT infrastructure, ML, and NLP. Majithia explains
that “the lab will use these technologies as enablers to offer
cutting-edge feature sets on our platforms and workflow
solutions,” such as a personalized recommendation engine,
an AI-based customized study planner, a metadata tag gen-
erator, or an automated abstract creator. Some of these will
be demonstrated at Impelsys’s booth J47 in Hall 4.2.
Kotesh Govindaraju, executive v-p and head of the Americas for Impelsys,
will present the talk “New Frontiers in Publishing and Education: Winning
in the Digital Era” on Wednesday, October 16, at 11 a.m. at Hall 4.2’s
Education Stage. On the same day at 3:30 p.m., Stefan Kend, Impelsys’s
executive v-p and head of EMEA and Asia Pacific, will give a talk titled
“Effective Knowledge Management and Digital Transformation Strategies
with iPC Scholar” at Hall 4.2’s Academic and Business Information Stage
(N101).
Ingenta
With the appoint-
ment of Scott Win-
ner as Ingenta’s CEO
last October (he had been the COO since 2015), a slew of
changes have taken place at the company formerly known as
Vista and Publishing Technology. “We are now organized
continued on p. 31
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 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Title Management, Editorial, and
Production from Klopotek
Klopotek is taking title manage-
ment, editorial, and production
(TEP) processes to the next level.
Many of Klopotek’s TEP services are
now available on Stream, the com-
pany’s cloud-based platform that
facilitates intuitive business and
workflow-driven support. Frankfurt
Book Fair visitors will also get to see
a special feature in the Klopotek
Stream user experience.
“The Klopotek Stream UX is about
harmonizing key business processes
in publishing,” says Nella Klopotek,
executive v-p for UX design and UI
development. “Take process-oriented
Nella Klopotek, executive v-p for UX design and UI
title management: Adding title infor- development at Klopotek.
mation and metadata happens in the
Title Metadata Editor app, which is the central information
hub. But selected workflow steps can be completed by spe-
cialists using smaller dedicated apps such as Classification
Manager, Blurb Manager, Sales Price Manager, or Product
Quality Manager.” Splitting up business processes into sev-
eral smaller apps, she adds, “helps people focus on their
specific needs when completing tasks, while end-to-end
integration of the individual apps and a unified UX kick in
to smooth the progress throughout the product life cycle.”
The same goes for rights sales, explains Klopotek.
“There is not one large Stream application that covers all
elements. Instead, there are several small apps such as
Rights Sales Manager for marketing available rights,
Rights Sales Contract Manager for handling related con-
tracts, and Rights Accounting Manager for all accounting
processes. These apps use the same data and work with
the same components, but the UX helps Stream users to
focus on what is relevant for them.”
Peter Karwowski, CTO of Klopotek, adds, “The Con-
tract Wizard app, for instance, enables the creation of the
complete contractual documents with just seven clicks.
So this small but essential workflow step can be done
very quickly without involving other aspects of rights
contract management.”
Drop by booth D12 in Hall 4.0 to find out more about
Klopotek Stream and TEP.
30 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
In the new Stream UX, title life
cycle management now happens in a
configurable interface. Using a cen-
tral control panel, editors can acti-
vate elements of Early Title Manager,
Title Structure Manager, or Title
Metadata Editor on their screens.
To enhance this functionality,
the Klopotek team is developing a
Scheduling Manager app for Stream.
Scheduling is a central element for
supporting TEP, since the related
processes start even before a title is
approved for publication. “The
Scheduling Manager app will cover
all functionalities of our existing
Classic Line module but with the UI
and UX redesigned to offer a better
experience and ease of use,” Karwowski says.
Publisher C.H. Beck, which has worked with Klopotek
for the past 20 years, is moving from the Klopotek Classic
Line to Stream, and it is already seeing positive effects. Last
year, it started implementing Contact Manager, Contract
360°, and Ticketing for customer service as well as Inven-
tory Manager for warehouse management. “The responsive
design of the Stream apps gives our sales representatives
and editors the ability to check on the titles—even while
they are being processed—on their smart devices from
wherever they are, which is most helpful,” says Paul Bis-
choff, head of IT and organization at C.H. Beck.
The Klopotek team is also working on an Order Entry
Manager for Stream together with Holtzbrinck’s publish-
ing services company HGV. “This solution—through a
single input screen—offers intuitive search while sup-
porting order entry for one-off orders and subscription
products,” says Karwowski. Once Klopotek completes
apps for order to cash (O2C) processes, Stream will offer
end-to-end publishing services.
For Stream, Karwowski says, Klopotek “will continu-
ously develop new web apps to meet emerging market
needs and business processes, and provide continual
updates on and new functionality to existing TEP apps.
We are also in the process of supporting important W3C
standards, such as ensuring web accessibility for people
with visual impairment in all our Stream apps.”
OCTOBER 2019
continued from p. 28
around products and services—instead of operating as sev-
eral business units under a large umbrella—in order to better
align ourselves with clients and focus on the solutions they
need,” says Winner, emphasizing that Ingenta’s roots are
firmly in publishing. “We have seen how dynamic this
industry is and we continue to find new ways to help our
partners.”
The team recently worked with a multinational academic
publisher that needed a unified approach to contracts, rights,
and royalties within a complex organizational and deci-
sion-making structure. “They wanted to move from a system
that is divisionally managed to one that is corporately man-
aged. Our solution allowed for implementation at divisional
and departmental levels while also integrating with a ledger
system accompanied by several different contract processes,”
says Winner, pointing out that the publisher “quickly found
value in having the contracts included and is now discover-
ing new opportunities and capabilities through this unified
approach.”
For a scholarly medical society, Ingenta Edify was used to
enable new journals’ creation on a more dynamic publish-
ing platform. The whole project was up and running in three
months.
Winner has also launched several new products, including
Ingenta Aperture, a business portal that enables publishers to
share information with trusted parties, including authors,
independent contractors, commission reps, and printers.
“Aperture has the flexibility to allow interaction as well as to
provide fresh data. This frees companies from having to
repeatedly answer queries, while giving them confidence that
their information is secure and accessible,” explains Winner.
His team has also created the Ingenta ConChord platform for
music publishers and agencies, which “grew out of the con-
tracts, rights, and royalties systems that we have spent 30
years refining for book publishers.”
Ingenta, Winner says, will continue to innovate and evolve
around contracts, rights, and royalties, which are key to its
core business. “Our content curation capabilities will become
more dynamic to help clients respond quickly to fast-moving
market demands with new journals and special editions. We
are also seeing more opportunities for creative ad placements
in books and journals, amid the relentless pressure for pub-
lishers to offer content for free. We are monitoring all these
and looking into ways to leverage them for our publishing
clients.”
Learn more about Ingenta and its solutions at booth F64 in Hall 4.2.
MarkLogic
MarkLogic is all about simplifying data integration, which is
one of the most complex challenges in IT. The goal of their
highly unusual platform, MarkLogic Data Hub, is to elimi-
The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
nate friction in every step of the data integration process,
thereby enabling organizations to achieve a 360-degree view
of their data faster than ever, gain agility, lower IT costs, and
safely share their data.
“We have deployed our Data Hub to simplify the process
for more than 100 clients from across the information indus-
tries, including STM, finance, legal, and educational compa-
nies and associations,” says chief strategy officer Matt Turner.
SpringerLink, for instance, is one of MarkLogic’s lon-
gest-running large-scale projects. “With this platform, Springer
Nature is able to take control of its content and data, and
deliver customized products and unique experiences,” says
Turner, adding that the MarkLogic Data Hub behind Spring-
erLink is “a single system that brings together content and
data from many sources within the publishing company and
delivers that through multiple interfaces.” One unique feature
is the inclusion of the rights and permissions data along with
the content, which enables Springer Nature to customize and
sell information bundles on the fly.
Pearson’s MarkLogic Data Hub includes not just descrip-
tive metadata but also, critically, the learning objects, topics,
and themes explored in the content. By mapping all these, the
data hub delivers a single view of the content and allows Pear-
son to see how the content is used in each stage of the publish-
ing process. “This drives reuse of content from across the
organization and leads to tailored one-to-one delivery, which
is a foundation of Pearson’s overall goal in delivering student
outcomes, not just content or courses,” says Turner, whose
team has also worked on other landmark platforms such as
Dow Jones’s Factiva and Lexis Advance.
End consumers, Turner says, are struggling to find the
information they need, and this situation is worsening as
more data becomes available through different channels.
“This means that publishers need to reorganize their infor-
mation internally and invest in their data and work with cus-
tomers to meet these new demands and market shifts.”
Going digital, he adds, is much more than putting a book or
an article online. “Connecting the data around the content,
including customer data and internal data such as product
and sales information, is fundamental to what we do—which
is to help in delivering the right content at the right time on
the right device to the end consumers through our proven
data hub platform.”
Visit booth K35 in Hall 4.2 for more information on MarkLogic or to talk to
one of their experts.
Newgen
KnowledgeWorks
For Newgen KnowledgeWorks, the goal is always helping
publishing clients maximize efficiencies in a competitive
market. The platforms and solutions developed by the team
aim to achieve that while allowing deep client engagement
continued on p. 33
31
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Publishing Processes and Tools at
KNK Business Software
At KNK, the mission is to support pub-
lishers in their digital transformations and
help them stay profitable. “Our belief is
that publishers that are independent and
profitable ensure the freedom of the press,
which forms the backbone of democ-
racy,” says founder and CEO Knut Nich-
olas Krause. “So we work hard to provide
business software for publishers that
focus on growing their revenues—with
the help of CRM software, for instance—
and decrease their workloads in the face
of an increasing number of revenue
streams and media and sales channels,
through the use and support of world-
class best practice processes.”
Krause explains, “Large publishing
houses are often organized quite differ-
ently in terms of structure and work-
flow. But in the production of new
books, magazines, events, or films, for
instance, all publishers agree that the
core business is a cooperative effort
involving various specialists in a project.
Collaboration, particularly with exter- Knut Nicholas Krause, founder and CEO of
nal partners, is also an essential part of KNK Business Software.
the publishing process, and that’s all the same for every
media company. We provide the most modern and inte-
grated solutions to support the media company in market
research; content production; marketing and sales; and
invoicing, accounting, and controlling.”
Krause finds that, without help, these collaborations can
be disheartening. “Almost every single project participant
is using a different tool, and then someone else will come
along to sort, tag, and collate the whole clutter. Efficiency
is extremely rare even with digital-first publishers,” he
says, adding that “even if the publisher is using an estab-
lished collaboration tool—say, from Apple, Google, or
Microsoft—or even if a CMS is used, the workflow is full
of disruptions, especially when it comes to dealing with
areas such as metadata management, sales, and royalty
accounting.”
KNK ties up these loose ends and connects the dots by
combining various Microsoft tools into an industry- and
customer-specific workflow that enables an efficient pub-
lishing process. The tools include Teams (for chat, video
conferencing, and document sharing), Flow (workflow
32 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
and process control), PowerBI (reporting
and dashboards), PowerApps (mobile
applications), Office365 (collaborative
work in the same document), Dynamics
for Sales/Marketing (CRM and market-
ing automation), and Business Central
(planning processes such as metadata
and royalty management)
“Our publishing software is focused on
helping publishers align their processes
‘content first’ in order to optimize con-
tent in all current and future media for-
mats, and for reuse in various combina-
tions. Role-based visuals within our
software system enable publishing spe-
cialists and staff to work efficiently. We
also have a visual process support that
guides representatives through the sales
process and help them to plan the next
steps with their clients and leads,”
Krause says. “The connection between
CRM and marketing automation sup-
ports publishers not only in the
lead-nurturing process but also in all
communications across the whole cus-
tomer life cycle.”
KNK can also help the clients’ own development teams
create in-house process support apps tailored to their spe-
cific needs. “Our workshop App-in-a-Day offers an on-site
hackathon where teams of participating employees come
up with a solution, or digital product, using Microsoft
Flow, PowerBI, PowerApps, and Office365. Each team will
be provided with a coach if required. Fun aside, the result-
ing apps are often well-functioning prototypes that can be
further refined to be a part of the collaborative platform.”
Krause also sees a high potential for AI in streamlining
and automating publishing processes. He and his team
have introduced EMIL, a machine-learning app that uses
text recognition to analyze incoming customer requests,
to the publishing industry. “Modern publishing systems
have to support modern ways of working, which is
becoming more independent of device and location. Intel-
ligent and connected business applications will be a critical
success factor for the publishing industry of tomorrow.”
Head over to booth F1 in Hall 4.0 and check out new collabo-
ration tools and solutions from KNK Business Software.
OCTOBER 2019
continued from p. 31
right from the start of the product life cycle.
PubKit is one such solution. The highly intuitive and uni-
fied management system for journals accelerates manuscript
publication for dissemination in multiple formats, platforms,
and media. It offers authors and editors dynamic scheduling
capabilities with content-automation tools for workflow
optimization and task scheduling that meet the needs of each
individual journal. A single shared dashboard helps publish-
ers review the progress of content through the workflow—
from submission to delivery—while analytics and reporting
capabilities provide real-time updates for greater transpar-
ency between collaborators.
As for SilkEvolve, it is all about converting legacy content.
“We make this solution an intelligent ‘guided’ process that
dramatically improves the fidelity of e-book content to the
print original,” says president Maran Elancheran, adding that
“SilkEvolve knows how to read PDFs and knows when it
needs a human being to validate that reading. It also covers
all ePub3 functionalities and is capable of implementing
enhancements such as audio and video support, SVG,
MathML, multiple navigation tables, and many new CSS3
formatting properties.”
RedShift, on the other hand, is focused on giving authors
ownership of the content-production workflow. “Publishers
still retain the important checks and balances to ensure
high editorial standards and rigorous cost control,” says
Elancheran. “We incorporate machine learning into the
page composition process, which means that there is con-
tinuous improvement embedded into the very core of
RedShift.”
Newgen’s in-house editing tool, CEGenius, uses AI, ML,
and NLP. Designed to streamline many copy editing tasks, it
automates the manuscript editing process as much as possi-
ble while addressing both language and style issues. “It frees
our editors from the mechanical tasks so they can focus on
the art of editing itself,” says Elancheran, whose develop-
ment teams are constantly looking into extending the com-
pany’s range of services.
The Newgen team is currently supporting publishers in
content development, early manuscript assessment, and
author management. It’s working on facilitating list manage-
ment, content acquisition, rights and permissions manage-
ment, peer-review management, and product design. “In
order to deliver top-notch products, we have to start applying
technological solutions earlier in the product life cycle,” says
Elancheran. “This is what we are doing by developing prod-
ucts such as PubKit, SilkEvolve, RedShift, and CEGenius.”
Head over to booth C2 in Hall 6.2 to check out Newgen KnowledgeWorks’
platforms and solutions.
PageMajik
Fresh from its acquisition of cloud-based content review
platform Pubcentral, PageMajik is fast expanding its soft-
The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
ware platform beyond
the initial content pro-
duction proposition.
“PageMajik has more
than 20 publishing pro-
ductivity and collabora-
tion modules to simplify the workflows that support
authors, editorial, development, and production,” says
David Brake, the founder of Pubcentral, who has joined
PageMajik as its COO. “We are essentially bringing the
stakeholders together on a collaborative ‘content in context’
platform. These modules can be used individually or on an
enterprise level to allow players within a publisher’s ecosys-
tem to create, share, and access ‘content in context’ and
metadata associated with the content.”
At Springer Nature, for instance, these functionalities
have enabled seamless manuscript acceptance, transmittal
to production, and basic development to insure content
integrity and quality. Authors and production editors at the
publishing house use PageMajik’s WYCIWYG (“what you
change is what you get”) feature to review and make
changes to the content that are then reflected in an automat-
ically generated PDF proof. “With our robust version-con-
trol tool for chapters, articles, and associated assets,
Springer has greater oversight of their workflow and can
more accurately track the components necessary for each
publication,” Brake says.
Now a subscription-based platform, PageMajik is
designed to increase efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve
the quality of a wide range of content types. Two enhanced
features are getting a lot of attention from publishers: the
WordSword authoring template and a CSP (content services
platform) engine. WordSword enables template creation for
chapters, articles, or content objects. Using the tool, Brake
says, “a publisher receives a more complete and actionable
manuscript submission from authors, which cuts down the
amount of copy editing, type marking, and formatting by
50%–70%.”
The CSP engine gives publishers more complete informa-
tion about their content in context while facilitating collab-
oration among workflow players. It also helps to ensure
compliance when high-value content must meet indus-
try-specific standards such as assessment and certification.
For Brake and his PageMajik team, the CSP engine encapsu-
lates the four Cs—content, context, collaboration, and com-
pliance.
“Our current focus is on introducing more AI and process
automation for routine user tasks. We are training the AI to
produce myriad downstream inferences that can be used by
various functional groups within a publishing company,”
says Brake.
Visit PageMajik at booth M86 in Hall 4.2 to learn more about its CMS
platform.
33
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Technology Changes;
The Mission Does Not
By Charles Linsmeier
L
et’s set the scene: a student at an urban Chicago col-
lege opens up her online textbook and begins reading
the opening passages from Paul Krugman’s Macro-
economics, having just completed an active learning
assignment that featured one of his New York Times
op-eds on Brexit. A thousand miles west, a student in Colo-
rado downloads a copy of General Chemistry by OpenStax
and completes a series of molecular drawing activities online,
before watching a pre-class tutorial to prepare for an upcom-
ing interactive lecture. That evening, a student at a rural
New Hampshire college considers her contribution to the
rhetorical framework of The Open Anthology of Earlier
American Literature, published online by her professor and
distributed under Creative Commons licensing.
Over the last few years, using publisher-created course
materials or adopting open educational resources (OERs)
has been presented as a binary choice. But, in 2019, we now
know the reality is quite different. In contrast to the polariz-
ing view that publisher-created and OER content are at
odds with each other, it is now well established that open
educational resources and publisher-created materials and
learning platforms are complementary.
That’s an incredibly positive development for educators.
Adopting a textbook authored by Krugman can bring a
Nobel laureate’s perspective into the classroom that other-
wise would be available only to students who could afford to
attend Princeton University or the graduate school at the
City University of New York. But relying solely on Krug-
man’s text could also mean foregoing the opportunity to cre-
ate resources that align it with the school’s local curriculum.
An instructor looking to reduce costs for students by relying
solely on a free online textbook from OpenStax, meanwhile,
would be sacrificing an opportunity to bring in other author-
itative voices, and risk foregoing digital learning resources
that could spur academic improvement for underserved
student populations.
In today’s market, choosing publisher-created materials
and open educational resources does not have to result in
fewer tools or points of view being available to students.
Instead, choices today are increasingly driven by finding the
right balance to complement the pedagogy for a given class,
whether it is in person or online, or taught by a full-time or
part-time instructor. And benefits accrue from the prevalence
of customization tools within learning platforms that allow
34 www.publishersweekly.com
OCTOBER 2019
Why melding publisher
content and open educational
resources is a win-win
Charles Linsmeier
instructors to mix and match content from various sources
to fit their specific aims.
That is why Macmillan Learning recently released Intellus
Search, a free-to-use search tool geared specifically to sup-
port the adoption of open and freely available content to
complement the course materials that instructors already
use. For some time, Macmillan Learning has looked for ways
to facilitate the adoption of open educational resources to
enhance the effectiveness of classroom instruction, dating
back to the 2012 beginning of our partnership with Open-
Stax and Sapling Learning, programs that continue today.
These efforts helped improve the online environment for
students and instructors, so that the best OERs can be
supported by a leading publisher’s technology. And they
convinced us at Macmillan of the need for additional efforts
like Intellus Search. With Intellus Search, instructors can find
the best freely available content to complement their course
materials, vetted for things like dead links and accessibility
concerns, and use those resources on their platform of
choice.
I’ll be speaking more on this subject at a panel titled “The
Future of Learning Materials” next month at the Open
Education Conference in Phoenix. But suffice it to say, ours
is an exciting sector, evolving with technology. But the mis-
sion remains the same: helping students learn, whether that’s
bringing a diverse set of authors to the classroom, developing
insights into student learning to enable instructors to iden-
tify students who need additional help, or finding ways to
support open licensing. At Macmillan Learning, we know
that the greater our partnerships and collaborations with the
academic community, the more students will benefit.  ■
Charles Linsmeier is senior v-p, content strategy,
at Macmillan Learning.
 Make use of
dedicated apps
for handling
specific processes SEE A DEMO:
HALL 4.0
Detail title information based
STAND D12
on all metadata standards

Define your prices: time

periods, scales, currencies

Workflow-oriented
editing of text blurbs
 Find out more at
our stand and see
live demonstrations
of the apps!

Hall 4.0
Stand D12

Truly cloud-
based workflow
support
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
What’s cooking?
Alastair Horne looks at the key issues
for scholarly publishing and previews
some of the seminars which will
address these themes
This year has proved another pivotal year in scholarly and
STM publishing, with open access continuing to dominate
the news. The groundbreaking Plan S initiative, launched a
few weeks before last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, initially
insisted that all scholarly publications about research funded
by its members – a wide range of research funders including
the Gates Foundation, the UK’s Wellcome Foundation and
UKRI (United Kingdom Research and Innovation) – must
be open access by the start of 2020. This year, in response to
consultations with stakeholders, it has announced a one-year
delay and updated its implementation guidance to offer more
detail about what is, and isn’t, acceptable. With transformative
deals now supported by Plan S as an interim measure until
2024, almost every month has seen the announcement of new
read-and-publish deals between publishers and consortia,
bringing the costs of open access APCs (article processing
charges) and paid subscriptions into a single agreement.
Artificial intelligence remains a hot topic too, with
growing numbers of companies exploring what insights
and added value – for both researchers and publishers –
can be gained from applying machine learning methods to
the outputs from scholarly research. And the industry is
perhaps more than ever subject to pressures from the world
outside its ecosystem: diversity and inclusivity are growing
issues as the industry faces up to its need to better represent
the wider world; and sustainability in a world of climate
change is another increasing concern.
As ever, the Frankfurt Book Fair offers plenty of insights into
all these topics, with the Academic and Business Information
Stage – to be found at N101 in Hall 4.2 – hosting a series
of free talks on a wide range of subjects. Today kicks off at
8.45am with a complimentary breakfast dished up by the
chefs at the Scholarly Kitchen and the Society for Scholarly
Publishing, with conversations on industry developments,
and equity, diversity and inclusivity all on the menu.
Though open access monographs and book chapters are
currently excluded from the dictates of Plan S, with a
statement and some guidance promised for the end of
2021, the subject remains an important one, particularly
for the humanities. Springer Nature open access books
director Ros Pyne will be offering an overview of recent
developments in the field today at 4pm. Her colleagues
Dagmar Laging and Susie Winter will be sharing their
experiences of negotiating read-and-publish deals,
including this year’s mega-deal with Projekt DEAL in
Germany, the following day at 11am. And today at 1pm,
FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
speakers from
Springer will address
the question of how
publishers can do
more to support the
17 Sustainable
Development Goals
set by the United
Nations to promote
prosperity while
protecting the planet.
Springer is also
represented in one of
the fair’s three sessions
dealing with artificial
intelligence, clearly
one of this year’s key
Alastair Horne topics. Henning
Schoenenberger and Niels Peter Thomas will be joined by Jim
Longo of HighWire at 10am on Friday to discuss “AI 2.0:
Machine-Generated Content, Intelligent Automation, and the
Future of Academic Publishing”; half an hour earlier, John
Prabhu of SPi Global will talk on leveraging technology to
create intelligent content; while at 1pm Nikolai Karelin and
Yuri Svirid of Silk Data will explore “Artificial Intelligence (AI/
KI) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) for Publishers”.
Web of Science is also well represented in the many talks
scheduled at the Academic and Business Information stage.
Today at 3pm, editor-in-chief Nandita Quaderi discusses
“Editorial Selectivity and the New Publisher Portal”, with
reference to the company’s publisher-neutral global citation
index, while on Thursday at 10.30am Ian Potter (product
lead for publisher analytics) considers what data and metrics
can tell a publisher about their – and their competitors’ –
titles. An hour later, Matthew Hayes (director of publisher
& funder growth) offers an overview of the Transparent
Peer Review initiative: a cross-industry collaboration
between Publons, ScholarOne and Wiley aiming to develop
a practical, scalable and flexible solution for journals to
introduce open peer review to their publishing process.
Recent years have seen a resurgence of the university press
sector in the UK, with new open access presses launching at
several universities and Bristol opening its own University
Press alongside its longstanding and highly-respected Policy
Press. In the United States, however, several presses have
been threatened with closure as their parent universities cut
or withdraw their subsidies – funding for Stanford
University Press was reinstated for this financial year after
a public outcry, but its long-term future remains in doubt.
No doubt both these trends, along with many others, will
be discussed at the Seventh International Convention of
University Presses, a ticketed conference taking place in the
Dimension Room in Hall 4.2 on Saturday morning.
The fair also offers several opportunities for publishers
to meet start-ups aspiring to transform the research
industry, with Meet and Greet sessions organised at 3pm
on both Thursday and Friday. ■
21
 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
The power of the purse
Whether in a home or in a legislature, the holder of the
power of the purse is in a compelling position, writes
Christopher Kenneally. Spending choices determine what a
family will have for dinner and how much a government
will invest in guns and butter. But we also know that
spending choices on a more micro level also matter, and
today, in potentially far-reaching and lasting ways.
In her debut book, Buy the Change You Want to See
(Penguin Random House), author Jane Mosbacher Morris
urges readers to think consciously about all purchases, and
points out how consumers can leverage their consumption
habits to bring about the change they want to see in the
world. After all, the choices we make whenever we open
our wallet, she says, affect our environment, our
communities – and our culture.
Mosbacher Morris, founder and CEO of To The Market,
a company that connects businesses and consumers with
ethically made products from around the world, arrived at
her belief in the power of positive spending in a perhaps
surprising way: while working in the US Department of
State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism and in the Secretary’s
Office of Global Women’s Issues. She has also served as the
Director of Humanitarian Action for the McCain Institute
for International Leadership, based in Washington, DC.
“I don’t think I really understood the power I had, as an
individual, and then, as a small business owner, until I
started engaging with companies that literally looked at
their bottom line every single day,” she said in a recent
interview for Copyright Clearance Center’s podcast series,
“Beyond the Book”. “Regardless of where you fall
politically, the dignity of work, job creation and job
sustainment really have a big impact. What I continued to
see as I travelled and worked overseas was how powerful
market forces are,” she continued. “And the conclusion I
came to was that if we aligned our purchasing decisions
with our values, we could have a significant impact on
other people and on the planet.”
The guiding principle for Mosbacher Morris, which is
explored in Buy the Change You Want to See, is to
encourage consumers to look beyond products, to the
people responsible for bringing them to you, whether that’s
coffee beans or clothes – or, of course, books, newspapers
or any other kind of information.
“With more technology and more globalisation, we have
more visibility than ever before to understand who’s
making our products, and how are they being made,” she
said. “Sometimes, the stories are really extraordinary. We
come to understand what buying a cup of coffee at
Starbucks can do for farmers in the highlands of
Guatemala. Supply chain transparency focuses on how we
can [be more aware of] the journey that our product is
taking, from raw material to our front door. When it comes
to food, we often talk about farm-to-table. Well, I like to
22
WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
talk about factory-to-
front-door.”
Indeed, as often as a
front door opens into
someone’s living
room, today it can
also lead into
someone’s office.
Professional purchases
matter as much as
personal ones, advises
Mosbacher Morris.
And when businesses,
including publishers,
make purchases to
support their brands,
it’s an opportunity to
Jane Mosbacher Morris make a brand-
conscious statement by being
mindful where and how a t-shirt or
coffee mug was made. Indeed, for
citizens in developed nations, one
of the great questions of our time
is becoming: “Where do we want
to send our money?”
And in today’s increasingly
manipulated, Amazon-dominated
media market, this is an especially
important question for readers and
information speakers. As the rise
of fake news and other forms of
misinformation makes clear, it really matters where we get
our publishing products from – our books, our news, our
novels. Those purchasing decisions matter not only to
individual authors and their publishers, but also, they
matter to readers, to our culture, and our society too.
“Thinking about the type of stories and the coverage we
want to see is another example of us as consumers really
voting with our eyeballs, with our time, and sometimes
with our wallets,” noted Mosbacher Morris. “If we as a
community or as a culture want to support robust
storytelling and photography over scandalous celebrity
tell-alls, then we have the ability to impact that by
purchasing publications that are doing great work.”
It’s a question very much on the minds of attendees at
this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, amid the rising political
and economic turmoil around the globe.
“What do we want our national discourse to sound like?
What do we want to have conversations with our friends
and family about? Is it about a celebrity divorce, or is it
about something much more meaningful, much more
thought-provoking, and much more important?”
Mosbacher Morris asks. “What we bring into our
households, what we bring into our offices, truly influence
the environment in which we’re living.” ■
Christopher Kenneally hosts “Beyond the Book”, a podcast series from
Copyright Clearance Center.
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Library access
to eBooks is
disappearing.
jasdfjasidjfi;a
isfdjf ;df kjflk

Macmillan Publishers wants to limit library access to eBooks.

Visit eBooksForAll.org to sign the petition.
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

Hype vs. reality

In The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s
Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our
Future (Hachette, 2018), Democratic presidential candidate
Andrew Yang painted a dark picture of a near future in which
Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes jobs away from blue-collar
and white-collar workers alike, leading to civil unrest. Elon
Musk once told an MIT audience that AI is humanity’s
“biggest existential threat”, a sentiment echoed by none other
than Stephen Hawking. Thankfully, writes Lenny Picker, a
wave of recent books offers a more realistic, nuanced – and
optimistic – view of how AI will impact our future.
Melanie Mitchell’s Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking
Humans, due in October from FSG, is a good place to start. Her
detailed, but jargon-free, survey begins
with a humbling look at the origins of the
scientific discipline, and examines how
the major headline-making developments
of recent years, such as IBM’s Watson’s
Jeopardy victory, are just examples of what
scientists term narrow or weak AI systems.
Mitchell concedes the potential is there
for dangerous and unethical uses of
algorithms and data. But her nuanced approach will convince
many that: “We humans tend to overestimate AI advances and
underestimate the complexity of our own intelligence.”
Ernest Davis, a professor of computer science at NYU’s Courant
Institute of Mathematical Science, takes a similar, measured, less
alarmist approach in Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence
We Can Trust, published last month by
Pantheon. Co-authored with Gary Marcus,
the founder and CEO of Geometric
Intelligence, a machine-learning company
acquired by Uber in 2016, the book
debunks the hyperbolic prognostications
about the pace of AI development – and
the authors are amusingly caustic in
response to the doomsday comments such
as those made by Musk and Hawking.
“What AI, exactly, are they talking about? Back in the real world,
current-day robots struggle to turn doorknobs, and Teslas
driven in ‘Autopilot’ mode keep rear-ending parked emergency
vehicles.” At a minimum, Rebooting AI readers will learn how
to be more sceptical consumers of news accounts about AI.
Robert Elliott Smith, a founding member of the University
College London Centre for the Study of
Decision-Making Uncertainty, offers a more
disquieting take, meanwhile, in Rage Inside
the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms,
and How to Stop the Internet Making
Bigots of Us All, published by Bloomsbury
last August. Smith focuses not on a future
where machines have replaced people,
but on a present-day problem with AI:
Continues on page 26 g

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f Continued from page 24 The title was produced by Shane’s own

algorithms that have generated racist outputs, such as Microsoft’s
Twitter bot, Tay, which was shut down in one day after it praised
Hitler, and stated that all feminists should die. Smith digs deeply
into algorithmic evolution, arguing for greater “diversification
of the engineers involved in algorithmic design”.
Flynn Coleman strikes a similar chord, from a non-scientist’s
perspective, in A Human Algorithm: How Artificial Intelligence
Is Redefining Who We Are, out this month from Counterpoint.
Coleman, a writer and international human
rights attorney, cautions that “whether
intelligent machines will learn from the
darkest parts of our human nature, or the
noblest, remains to be seen”. She’s not
optimistic about where we are now. “We
are alarmingly unready for the reality of
powerful AI that reaches conclusions and
decisions independent from human
intervention,” she concedes. But despite
that, Coleman holds out hope that the technology will “reveal who
we are – resilient and vulnerable, curious and creative, abounding
with potential for genuine connection with ourselves and others”.
Readers seeking a lighter entry point into this complex subject
will find one in Janelle Shane’s You Look Like a Thing and I Love
You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the
World a Weirder Place (Little Brown/Voracious, November).
algorithm when it was asked to formulate
a pickup line and captures the spirit of her
humour blog, “aiweirdness.com”. But
Shane is not just looking for cheap laughs.
She cautions that “[as] more of our lives
are governed by algorithms, the quirks of
AI are beginning to have consequences
far beyond the merely inconvenient”.
And with AI fueling advances in ride-sharing companies such
as Uber and investments in other transportation modes, Hop,
Skip, Go: How the Mobility Revolution Is Transforming Our
Lives, by urban mobility expert John Rossant and business
journalist Stephen Baker (HarperBusiness, November), explores
how the information revolution will impact our mobility. While
they cover autonomous vehicles, they are quick to point out that
the changes are more widespread. The
“next stage of human mobility will not be
defined by a single, iconic technology”, they
argue, but instead people will have a range
of “networked mobility” options, which
will come with complex social implications.
AI may not be headed where the
doomsayers say it is, but as Fair attendees
will no doubt hear, its potential impact is
still great. ■

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 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY
Beyond Nordic noir
Lenny Picker reviews a broad range of
gritty Norwegian crime novels
Ask the average Anglo-American mystery fan about
Norwegian crime fiction, and you’ll likely hear about Jo
Nesbo, the country’s breakout star. But Norway of course
has a long and rich history in the genre, including a unique
tradition, initiated by a clever marketing campaign in
1923, of reading crime fiction during Easter.
Still, Barry Forshaw, the author of Nordic Noir, and a
leading expert on crime fiction from Scandinavia, believes
that Norwegian crime writers do perhaps owe a debt of
gratitude to Nesbo, who has become a great ambassador of
sorts. “The rising international appeal of Norwegian writers
was spearheaded by the success of The Snowman, the book
that propelled Nesbo to stratospheric heights,” Forshaw
says, adding that Nesbo’s “work also provides a coolly
objective guide to fluctuations in Norwegian society”.
Indeed, Nesbo’s critically-acclaimed works have become
bestsellers around the globe, and
Nesbo even hit the big screen with
a major Hollywood hit, 2017’s The
Snowman, which starred Michael
Fassbender as the FBI-trained Oslo
police inspector Harry Hole. In
July of this year, Knopf published
the 12th book in the Hole series in
the US, Knife, in which Nesbo
once again puts Hole through the
wringer. Forshaw considers Knife
as “Nesbo back in form”, although
he also notes “a more pronounced
internationalism” in the writing, developing further Nesbo’s
“avowed aim to reach beyond his countrymen and women”.
Nesbo, it turns out, is just the tip of the fjord when it
comes to brilliant, gritty novels featuring brutal crimes and
damaged investigators, penned in Norwegian and
translated into English. Mystery and detective fiction has a
long history in Norway. In 1839, Marits Hansen, one of the
country’s seminal novelists, published Mordet på
Maskinbygger Roolfsen (The
Murder of Engine Maker
Roolfsen). Its publication
predated Poe’s “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue” by two years,
leading some to label it the first
modern mystery story.
Norway’s tradition of producing
great historical mysteries is also
going strong – for example, 2015’s
The Mark of Shame by H K
Fauskanger (Gyldendal). Not yet
available in English, the novel is
30
WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
set in 1905, as Norway and Sweden were in the midst of
dissolution. Against that fraught backdrop, an unknown
man collapses and dies inside the Norwegian Prime
Minister’s office, sparking an
inquiry that uncovers the first
stirrings of Nazism.
The Norwegians also excel at
the kind of baffling “locked room”
crime puzzles beloved by Golden
Age of Detection fans, for example,
Fauskanger’s 2013 book The Scarlet
Room (Gyldendal), which features
a setup that John Dickson Carr
would revel in. This book is also
still awaiting an English translation,
which could come soon.
And former Norwegian justice minister Anne Holt’s
Edgar-nominated 1222 (Scribner) features a premise
straight out of Agatha Christie – a retired, wheelchair-
bound detective, Hanne
Wilhelmsen, is trapped in a hotel
by a blizzard, along with more
than 100 others, when a killer
starts to pick off his or her prey.
Holt’s worldwide sales are said to
exceed three million books, with
her 10th and final Wilhelmsen
novel, In Dust and Ashes,
published by Scribner in 2018.
Holt, whom Nesbo has labelled
“the godmother of modern
Norwegian crime fiction,”
introduced a new strong female protagonist this past July,
in A Grave for Two (Atlantic Books).
Meanwhile, in November, Lightning Books is to publish
the first English edition of one of the most acclaimed
Norwegian whodunits – Stein Riverton’s The Iron
Chariot – nearly 110 years after its original publication.
Riverton is so highly regarded in Norway that the annual
prize for the best Norwegian crime story is named for him
– though Riverton is actually the
pen name of Sven Elvestad, a
novelist and journalist who led a
colourful life, including landing a
major coup when he became
Hilter’s first foreign interviewer.
The Iron Chariot features
Elvestad’s series sleuth, Asbjorn
Krag, a retired police detective,
who’s called to southern Norway
following two violent deaths, one
of a man believed to have died
years earlier.
Karin Fossum is perhaps the second best-known
Norwegian crime writer after Nesbo. Her 13th Inspector
Konrad Sejer novel, The Whisperer (Houghton Mifflin
Continues on page 32 g
1.
 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

f Continued from page 30 previously wrote YA novels, offers

Harcourt, August) features a a very different lead than Fossum
complex interrogation of a suspect – Aske has lost his job on the
who’d been receiving threatening force, and has just returned to the
anonymous messages in her outside world after time in prison
mailbox. In its review, Publishers and a psychiatric hospital.
Weekly praised the novel’s “great Reviewers have compared Bakkeid
precision and empathy” and called and his tormented lead to Nesbo,
it “an acute psychological study of and Harry Hole.
loneliness and grief”. Unlike many Norwegian novelist, playwright
other leads in police procedurals, and musician Frode Sander Øien
Scandinavian or not, Fossum’s has written bestselling crime fiction
Inspector Sejer is mild-mannered under the alias of Samuel Bjork.
and polite, and has no problem following the chain of The third of his Munch and Krüger
command. And Fossum’s crime fiction makes the most out series, The Boy in the Headlights
of Norway’s stunning natural features. “Norway remains, (Corgi), was published this month,
in most people’s consciousness, the most imposing of the and gives Special Investigations
Nordic countries,” she explains. “In terms of contemporary detectives Munch and Krüger a
crime fiction, the country’s forbidding landscape – and the real baffler, as they search for a
possibility for both the good and the bad to lose themselves serial killer who apparently
in the vast reaches – is reminiscent of the sprawling chooses his prey at random.
America of such writers as James Lee Burke.” Psychiatrist-turned-writer Torkil
In November, Raven Books will publish I Will Miss You Damhaug continued his Oslo Crime
Tomorrow by Heine Bakkeid, which launches a new series File books last month with a fourth
featuring Norwegian ex-chief inspector Thorkild Aske. The series entry, Certain Signs That You
book was shortlisted for the Riverton Prize. Bakkeid, who Are Dead (Headline). The gripping

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32
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY

plot centres on retired forensic own neighbourhood, and centres

pathologist Jennifer Plåterud’s on the murder of 15-year-old
investigation into the murder of a Idunn Olsen, and the crime’s
patient who had disappeared from connection to the theft of a hearse,
a hospital just outside Oslo, only which held the coffin of Jacobsen’s
to resurface in the facility’s son, who had died of cancer and
basement with a slit throat. was due to be buried the next day.
Former journalist Thomas And Publishers Weekly praised
Enger’s Inborn (Orenda Books) the “relentless, underlying
was published last month to great tension” in Kjell Ola Dahl’s The
reviews. The novel, a standalone, is Courier (Orenda Books), which
the latest from a Norwegian crime landed the author one of his two
writer Forshaw labelled “one of Riverton Prizes. Toggling between
the most unusual and intense 1942, 1967 and 2015, Dahl presents a whodunit involving
talents in the field” after his 2010 a murder committed during Germany’s occupation of
debut, Burned, the first of five Norway during the Second World War, probed by the
novels featuring investigative victim’s daughter after she learns that an unusual piece of
reporter Henning Juul. jewellery is about to be auctioned off.
In Riverton Prize nominee The With its rich, ongoing tradition of world-class crime
Girl With No Heart (Gyldendal) fiction, publishers looking for authors that can tantalise
Marit Reiersgaard gives police and thrill their readers should look to Norway. They will
detective Verner Jacobsen two find numerous gifted writers (including 2018 Riverton
mysteries to tackle – one of which Prize winner Unni Lindell) awaiting a chance to impress
is intensely personal – aided by his readers in English, and other territories and languages, and
partner Bitte Røed. The novel is set demonstrating again that when it comes to crime fiction,
in a village in Tranby, the author’s talent knows no borders. ■

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33
 News
FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

Getting
Spotlight onEven
America UNIT SALES OF PRINT BOOKS, JANUARY–SEPTEMBER 2018–2019
(in thousands)

TOTAL
With the holiday season ahead,
Andrew Richard Albanese reflects on 2018 2019 CHANGE

the industry has a chance to over- 466,160 459,525 -1.4%

thecome
trendsa that
small have
unit defined
decline 2019 so
in 2019 CATEGORY
far for US publishers – and what to

T
2018 2019 CHANGE
hrough the first nine months of 2019, unit sales
expect going forward
of print books were down 1.4% compared to the
Adult Nonfiction 201,583 200,424 -0.6%
Adult Fiction 95,479 92,132 -3.5%
When it comessame to printperiod
books,incan
2018 at outlets
US publishers makethatit areport
seventhto Juvenile Nonfiction 39,125 40,135 2.6%
straight year ofNPD BookScan.
growth? They have Unit salesbut
a shot, of will
all adult
need atitles
strongfell
Juvenile Fiction 104,241 103,407 -1.4%
final1.5%,
quarterwhileof 2019 to sales
print pull it of
off.juvenile
According to NPD
books were BookScan,
down just
which captures about 85% of print sales, total print units for the
0.3%. FORMAT
first nine
Themonths are down 1.4%
adult nonfiction segment for USwaspublishers
expected compared
to have a 2018 2019 CHANGE

to the same time

difficult period in 2018.last
matching Butyear’s
givensales,
the way 2018 kicked
particularly in the Hardcover 125,538 129,750 3.4%
off for publishers – with the publication of two blockbuster Trade Paperback 264,098 258,037 -2.3%
first part of the year, since it was facing tough comparisons
books, Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and James Comey’s A
with the host of books about the Trump administration that Mass Market Paperback 37,049 31,257 -15.6%
Higher Loyalty – a dip wasn’t exactly unexpected.
Inwere big hits early in 2018. Indeed, sales in the history/law/ Board Books 24,745 25,311 2.3%
recent years, strong sales of non-fiction books – paced
political science category were down
by political books about the Trump administration – have 13.9% from last year, Physical Audio 1,623 1,205 -25.7%
when
carried Fire and Fury,
publishers. And Fear, and Aquestion
the larger Higher Loyalty combined
now is whether SOURCE: NPD BOOKSCAN

thattotrend
sell more than
is over. Are2.3 millionover
people copies through
Trump? September.
Is there anything The
left top-selling
to be said about political title so far in 2019
the administration is Mark
that can shockLevin’s
and it the second-biggest
development print seller
for NPD Books, in the
who told year and the top-
BookExpo
interest readers of
Unfreedom to the Press,
tune ofwhich
a million-plus
has sold book
aboutsales?
368,700 It’s attendees this year
selling title that
in the after a number
nonfiction category.of blockbuster
Three other adult
not copies.
likely, suggested
Scribner’sDavid
version Walter, executive
of the Mueller director,
Report soldclient
nearly bestsellers
nonfiction intitles
2018,cracked
“political
the fatigue” may be setting
top 10 bestselling booksin.in the
298,000 copies, putting it in 20th place on the bestselling year to date: Educated by Tara Westover sold nearly
books so far this year. 690,000 copies, while Rachel Hollis had two books that
Helping to somewhat offset the decline in the sales of combined to sell nearly 1.2 million copies.
political books was the 6.3% increase in unit sales posted Adult fiction sales fell 3.5% in January–September 2019

export platform
by the biography/autobiography/memoir category, where
Michelle Obama’s Becoming, released in November 2018,
compared to the first nine months of 2018, despite the block-
buster success of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens,
has sold just over one million copies so far in 2019, making which sold 1.4 million copies this year so far, making it the #1
visit us in hall 5.0 stand B79
Year-to-Date Bestsellers
title of 2019. In second
play with magnetic quotes place on the adult fiction
and receive the most introverted gift!
RANK TITLE AUTHOR IMPRINT UNITS list was Heather Morris’s
1 Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens Putnam 1,430,735
The Tattooist of Auschwitz,
2 Becoming Michelle Obama Crown 1,002,878 which sold about 505,000
3 Educated
seminars, mTara Westover Random House 689,504 copies.
4 Brawl of the Wild (Dog Man #6) Dav Pilkey Graphix 639,613 Though sales in the gen-
5 For Whom the Ball Rolls (Dog Co Man #7) nfereNcesDav Pilkey Graphix 635,329
eral fiction segment (the
6 Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid Jeff Kinney Amulet 619,937
7 Girl, Wash Your Face r y
ilit eRachel Hollis Nelson 593,370
largest subcategory in
mo B m Rachel Hollis HarperCollins Leadership 592,684 fiction with 30.4 million
8 Girl, Stop Apologizing
g ra m
9 Oh, the Places You’ll Go! pro a Dr. Seuss Random House 573,067 copies sold through
10 The Tattooist of Auschwitz Heather Morris Harper 505,403
t September) rose almost
11 Unfreedom of the Press grants Mark R. Levin Threshold 368,695
1% over 2018, a number
12 Strengthsfinder 2.0
l schEmes Tom Rath Gallup 367,243
of genres had double-digit
13 The Wonky Donkey Craig Smith Scholastic 357,895
d e c l i n e s. T h e l a rg e s t
14 You Are a Badass
s laT orsJen Sincero Running Press 340,172
15 The Woman in the Window Tra n A.J. Finn Morrow 329,090 decline was a nearly 25%
SOURCE: NPD BOOKSCAN network a drop in science fiction;

y
v W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 5

#iamintrovert
34
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019 FRANKFURT SHOW DAILY

Among the other interesting trends to watch in the US environment in

market, Walter reported that NPD’s data shows “the middle is America: the top seller
being squeezed” in the US market, with high profile titles driving is Mark Levin’s right
a larger percentage of industry growth, along with deeper backlist. wing screed Unfreedom
In fact, NPD figures showed that in 2018, consumers bought more of the Press, which has
books published before 2000 than books published in the previous sold about 368,700
two years. And, Walter added, the top 10 bestselling books of 2018 copies. Right behind
– which included five books that sold one million print copies Levin is Scribner’s
– was the highest grossing Top 10 since 2012, when Fifty Shades edition of The Mueller
of Grey and The Hunger Games dominated the bestseller lists. Report, which sold
nearly 298,000 copies.
Surprises pace the 2019 bestsellers Meanwhile, Michelle
If you predicted that a debut fiction author would lead adult sales Obama’s Becoming,
in 2019, your publishing colleagues would probably have laughed. released in November
But Delia Owens’ debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing has in 2018, continues to sell,
fact dominated the bestseller list in 2019, selling more than 1.4 notching more than a
million copies through the first nine months of the year, making million copies so far in
it the number 1 title of 2019 by a mile. The second bestselling Oren Teicher with Margaret Atwood 2019, making it the
release of 2019 on the adult fiction list was Heather Morris’s second-biggest print seller of the year, and the top-selling title in the
The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which sold about 505,000 copies. non-fiction category. Three other adult non-fiction titles cracked
As discussed, the adult non-fiction segment was expected the top 10 bestselling books in the year to date: Educated by Tara
to have a difficult time matching last year’s sales, facing Westover, which sold nearly 690,000 copies, and two Rachel
tough comparisons with the host of books about the Trump Hollis books that combined to sell nearly 1.2 million copies.
administration that were big hits early in 2018. But sales of And Dav Pilkey had two hits in the children’s category with
political books were still pretty solid. And the top-selling his Dog Man series, selling a combined 1.3 million copies.
political titles so far in 2019 in fact reflect the fractured political Continues on page 36 g

35

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WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019
f Continued from page 35
What’s up with fiction?
While print sales have risen since 2013, it isn’t all good
news for publishers. Over the same period, adult fiction
print sales have been on the decline. And so far, 2019 isn’t
looking like that trend is going to change. According to
NPD BookScan, adult fiction sales are off by 3.5% in the
first nine months of the year, this despite Delia Owens’s
blockbuster debut leading all print sales for the year.
On the positive side, sales in the general fiction segment
(the largest sub-category in the fiction segment, with 30.4
million copies sold through September) did rise, up a
modest 1% over 2018. On the other hand, a number of
genres posted double-digit declines, including a nearly 25%
drop in science fiction. Westerns, romance, religion and
classics all had double-digit declines as well. Graphic
novels were a bright spot, with sales up 10.6%.
How many of the lost print genre sales are moving to
ebooks? Observers say it’s hard to measure, but there is little
doubt that ebooks released by indie and self-publishers –
including Amazon, which is siphoning up market share in
the genres especially, are having an impact on print sales.
Audiobooks continue to pace digital growth
The growth of digital audio has been a welcome development
for publishers in recent years – and there is no end in sight.
According to the most recent sales survey by the Audio
Publishers Association (APA), released in July 2018, sales of
audiobooks rose 24.5%, reaching $940 million. And more
than 91% of audiobook sales came from the digital format,
the APA said. Meanwhile the Association of American
Publishers (AAP) reports that downloadable audio has
jumped 35.2% over the previous year. Meanwhile, ebook
sales continue to lag, off by 3.8% for the first half of 2019.
Change for indie bookstores, Barnes & Noble
On the bookselling side, the American Booksellers
Association (ABA) continues to report a resurgence of indie
booksellers across the country, which is great news for
publishers, authors and readers. One major change coming:
at the end of 2019, ABA CEO Oren Teicher will step down
from his role after a decade running the US’s major
independent bookselling organisation. It’s been a great run
for Teicher, and he will leave on a high note. He will be
presented with the 15th annual Literarian Award at the
70th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner
on 20 November in New York.
Meanwhile, there is cautious optimism for the nation’s
largest bookstore chain, Barnes & Noble. After an acquisition
completed this summer, the chain is now a private company
again, and has a new leader familiar to the publishing
community: James Daunt, the man credited with leading
British bookseller Waterstones’ resurgence. Will Daunt’s
blueprint for success translate to the American market? Daunt
says he isn’t daunted by the challenge. “The stores need love,
and dollars,” he told Publishers Weekly in a recent interview.
“But there is no reason this company can’t be successful.” ■
 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

John Bracken:
QA On ebooks and
libraries
The future of the library
The World of
Publishing
ebook market in the US
has become a hot topic
in recent months. After a

Within Reach
few years of relative
calm – and tremendous
growth – the major
publishers have begun
scaling back their terms
with libraries, including FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR
price hikes, limits on
lending terms, and the
ATTENDEES
most contentious change RECEIVE COMPLIMENTARY
of all, Macmillan’s
decision to window new PRINT + DIGITAL
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starting 1 November. SUBSCRIPTION
But despite the changes John Bracken
by the major publishers, Your complimentary 6-month
digital content in libraries remains a priority. And now, the Digital
Public Library of America (DPLA), is helping lead an effort by subscription includes:
member libraries to take a measure of control over their future.
Andrew Richard Albanese recently caught up with John Bracken, 26 print copies and digital
executive director of the DPLA, to talk about those efforts. editions of PW—desktop and
app-friendly
The library ebook market has grown more contentious in recent
months, but through it all, I’ve heard you make some pretty
Special supplements and issues
optimistic statements. What’s your take on the state of the
library ebook market?
It’s an exciting time. At DPLA we believe that digital technology
Global rights and licensing deals
can serve to spread knowledge and unleash creativity for the
benefit of all, and we have been working, with partners, to enable 4,500 prepublication book
libraries to provide their patrons access to digital books through a reviews, 175 in every issue
mobile app, called SimplyE. SimplyE is a library-driven platform
that enables librares to serve bestsellers, backlist trade publications, Industry developments, news and
and independent and self-published titles to their patrons – a really
trends
wide variety of content from a range of providers in one place.
For example, this summer, DPLA teamed up with BiblioBoard
to make 37 independently published award-winning books
Premium subscriber-only content
available for library patrons to download and keep. access at PublishersWeekly.com

Access from the major publishers has grabbed the headlines, PLUS: bonus access to the
but what do you see as the biggest challenge in establishing a
147-year-old PW Archive —all
functional market for ebooks in libraries?
The biggest challenge is ensuring that, as more information is issues from 1872 forward in their
shared digitally, knowledge remains accessible to everyone – not original format
just a few. It would be a sad irony if knowledge and creativity
become more difficult to access in a digital age. Think of it this
way, a library would never organise its physical spaces to Request your FREE subscription.
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 WEDNESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2019

f Continued from page 37

separate books from one provider or another, and in the online
world, they should be able to merge their content from digital
providers in a single service environment owned by the library.

In April, DPLA announced a collaborative effort with the New

York Public Library (NYPL) and LYRASIS to provide libraries with
just that: “A free, open, library-controlled platform for managing
their ebook and audiobook services.” Tell us about that.
Our library-driven platform is already in use by hundreds of
libraries, which includes the DPLA Exchange, an online
marketplace with some 340,000 ebook titles available, and the
free SimplyE app from NYPL, which allows libraries to serve
all their ebooks and audiobooks to patrons in an environment
the library can control, and even add their own branding.
Libraries can get ebook licences from a number of places, of
course, but ours is the only platform that they can own and brand,
and that enables them to bring books from lots of different sources
together in one easy to use place, which in turn allows them to
serve a broader collection and reach more diverse audiences.

Earlier this year, DPLA devoted resources to making a terrific

ebook edition of The Mueller Report available. Tell us about
Every day BookBrunch that effort. And, how did the ebook do?
Yes, so when The Mueller Report was released, we quickly saw
provides the book trade with: that there was no high-quality free ebook version available. So
we worked with the Internet Archive and Code Mantra to make
the report into an ebook that would work well in e-readers, be
• Insight and perspective searchable, contain links to footnotes and be accessible to those
with text disabilities. And because it is a public domain document,
• Concision and accessibility we made it available for free to libraries and the public at
muellerreport.dp.la. And the ebook has done very well. It won
• Reliability and immediacy the 2019 Digital Book World Awards’ best non-fiction book, and
it has been downloaded more than 65,000 times directly from
DPLA and many thousands more times from our partner libraries.
Sign up now for our free Tell us a little about what’s next at DPLA. What projects are
daily headline email or you working on, or are on your wish list?
subscribe for in-depth As part of our work, which is supported by a grant from the Sloan
Foundation, we will be adding titles from more publishers and
stories and news: a variety of licensing models to the DPLA Exchange, while also

www.bookbrunch.co.uk
expanding the number of libraries we partner. We will be including
tens of thousands of digital audiobooks this year, including
offerings from publishers such as HarperCollins, Hachette,
Scholastic, Blackstone Publishing, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster
and others. And, we are looking to develop more arrangements
Discounts available with state libraries, like we recently announced with Texas.
We will also continue to build accessible ebooks out of
for members of SYP, SoA public documents, as we did with The Mueller Report. We see
and IPG and freelancers; an important opportunity to make ebooks about important
contemporary issues available to American library users. Our next
students and booksellers such effort will be an annotated, ebook version of the Senate
free of charge. Intelligence Committee report on Russian Active Measures
Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 US Election.
Through our partnerships with NYPL and other libraries across
the US, DPLA will continue to collect the best openly licensed
books, curate them and make them available to readers.  ■

38
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