London
TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
Quantum: publishing hits ‘mid-digital’
In his opening keynote at
the London Book Fair’s
Quantum conference, writes
Andrew Albanese, Tom
Goodwin, head of
innovation for Zenith
Media, spoke about
publishing in what he
dubbed “the mid-digital
age”, the period “before
things get amazing”, when
technology is still complex
— and often disappointing.
He spoke of a world —
and a publishing industry
— slogging through a
frustrating yet exciting time,
before the “post-digital
age”, where everything will
just work and the
technology will exist in the
Audiobooks continue steady sales rise INSIDE:
“Audiobooks are the golden
child of publishing at the
moment,” said Quantum
conference manager Orna
O’Brien, writes Ed
Nawotka. The afternoon of
Quantum was dedicated to
discussing growth in the
audiobooks sector.
Michele Cobb, executive
director of the US Audio
Publishers Association,
presented the results of the
organisation’s annual sales
background, without issues
such as rights infringements
or security risks.
“The world at the
moment is struggling to
adapt to the internet and
what it means,” he said. He
pointed out that people do
not do mobile banking —
“they do banking in the
modern age. People don’t
stream music online, they
listen to music; they don’t
do dating online, they’re
just dating in 2018. And it’s
this way of thinking we
have to get much better at.”
Goodwin acknowledged
that people were feeling
exhausted from the march
of technology in their lives.
survey. “The APA estimates
that audiobook sales in
2016 totalled more than
$2.1 billion, up 18.2%
over 2015, and with a
corresponding 33.9%
increase in units. This is the
third consecutive year that
audiobook sales have
expanded by nearly 20%,”
Cobb reported.
The growth is
commensurate with the
growth of the audience for
VISIT PW AND BOOKBRUNCH AT STAND 6C73
“I think the continued “I think more than
popularity of books and the anything else, you probably
continued success of need to be slightly more
physical books in particular ambitious as an industry,”
is a very strong counter- he concluded. “As an
trend.” He stressed the value industry, and as a planet, we
of publishers: ““Abundance need to get much better at
requires curation.” looking ahead, not behind.”
audiobooks. “According to
the new study, conducted by RIGHTS
Edison Research, 24% of ROUND UP AND
Americans, or more than 67 HIGHLIGHTS 3
million people, have
finished listening to at least
one audiobook in the last CAMEOS
THE WINNERS
year.” That is a 22%
increase over 2015.
4
Smartphones are the
most popular way for BRIEFCASE
people to listen to AGENTS’ TOP
audiobooks, having been TITLES 6
Continues on page 3 g
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 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
f Continued from page 1
cited by more than 29% of users as their primary listening
devices. The majority of people are listening at home
(57%) followed by in their cars or other means of
commuting and transportation (32%).
Avid readers listened to or read an average of 15 books
in the last year. And this isn’t just confined to readers of
print: earlier in the day, Annie Stone from book deals site
BookBub noted that 20% of its users in the UK were also
listening to audiobooks.
“Audio is not a blip,” Hachette UK ceo David Shelley
said. “Audiobooks could be one of the biggest parts of
our business. It has doubled in the last two years.” The
demographics of audiobook listeners skews young, with
48% of listeners being under the age of 35. Nielsen
figures showed audiobook sales in the UK doubling in
the past five years.
A handful of retailers — particularly Amazon’s Audible
platform — dominate the marketplace, though the Edison
survey also indicated that libraries were key to the
market. Still, as the market grows, more outlets for
consumers to discover and purchase audiobooks will be
welcome. “Anything that makes it easier for consumers to
buy audiobooks is good,” Shelley said. “I really believe
there is still a massive untapped market out there.”
Jo Henry to BookBrunch
Jo Henry, previously VP, insight & analytics at
Nielsen Book, has joined BookBrunch as managing
director.
Henry will work with David Roche, who moves to
non-executive chair. She has worked previously at
Publishing News (md), Book Marketing Ltd (md),
and Victor Gollancz (sales director).
To contact London Show Daily at the
Fair, please visit us at the Publishers
Weekly stand 6C73.
Publisher: Joseph Murray
BookBrunch Managing Director: Jo Henry
Editors: Andrew Albanese, Nicholas Clee, Neill Denny
Reporter: Ed Nawotka
Project Coordinator: Bryan Kinney
Layout and Production: Heather McIntyre
Editorial Coordinator (UK): Marian Sheil Tankard
For a FREE digital trial to Publishers Weekly go to
publishersweekly.com/freetrial
Subscribe to BookBrunch via www.bookbrunch.co.uk
or email editor@bookbrunch.co.uk
LONDON SHOW DAILY
Rights round up
HarperCollins has signed world rights in six novels by Daniel Silva, furthering
his association with its Global Publishing Program. The first novel in the
deal is the author’s 21st, The Other Woman (July), in which spy and art
restorer Gabriel Allon confronts a dangerous new adversary.
Silva was the first author in the Global Publishing Program. Since then,
HC has published seven of his novels, in 24 countries and 15 languages. It
achieved a 60% increase in sales from The Heist (2014) to The English Spy
(2015), with The Black Widow (2016) continuing the trend. Sales of the
seven novels stand at 5.5m copies. Brian Murray, HC president and ceo, said:
“The energy, focus and passion for [Silva’s] books from our international
publishing teams has driven foreign language growth in sales of each of his
books, setting us up for continued international growth in the future.”
HarperCollins has bought world English rights in Jonas Jonasson’s sequel to
the bestselling The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window
and Disappeared, first published in the UK by Hesperus and taken over by
Abacus. The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man,
translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles, has been signed by Anna Kelly (4th
Estate UK), Iris Tupholme (HarperCollins Canada), and Katherine Nintzel
(William Morrow US). The Swedish publisher is Piratforlaget, and the agent is
Carina Brandt at the Brandt New Agency in Barcelona. Jonasson’s hero’s new
adventures begin with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of Champagne.
In her first acquisition for Picador, Georgina Morley has signed Kate Teltscher’s
The Palace of Palms: Kew’s Palm House and the British Imagination. Picador
has UK and Commonwealth rights through Clare Alexander at Aitken
Alexander, and will publish in 2020. Morley said: “Kate’s book is the most
delicious project, reminiscent of Kate Colquhoun’s acclaimed biography of
Joseph Paxton, A Thing in Disguise, and Andrea Wulf’s award-winning The
Invention of Nature. In it, she will tell the story of the great Palm House at
Kew and the rivalries between the chief gardener, John Smith, and the first
directors of Kew, Sir William Hooker and his son, Joseph. But it is also a story
about Britain’s passion for these exotic plants, about British imperial expansion
and the immense changes in our public and private lives in the 19th century.”
Federico Andornino at Weidenfeld has bought a new novel, Dignity, by
Alys Conran, whose debut Pigeon (Parthian) won the Wales Book of the
Year award and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Weidenfeld has UK and
Commonwealth rights (exc Canada) through Jenny Hewson at RCW, and
will publish in spring 2019. Dignity is inspired in part by Conran’s family
history in India. The author lectures in creative writing at Bangor. Andornino
said: “I honestly think she’s one of the best writers of her generation.”
PRE-FAIR HIGHLIGHTS
Faber UK and Graywolf US signed Lanny, a second novel by Granta publisher
Max Porter, author of the multi-prizewinning Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
(rights sold in 10 territories; agent Lisa Baker at Aitken Alexander).
Simon & Schuster UK signed 55, by Irish author James Delargy, in a six-figure
pre-empt; numerous international deals have been struck or are in train. 55 is a
serial killer thriller set in Western Australia (agent Marilia Savvides at PFD).
Michael Joseph won a five-way auction for world rights in The Whisper
Man and a second psychological thriller by a writer using the pseudonym
Alex North, and sold rights in several international territories, with more
to follow (agent Sandra Sawicka at Marjacq).
Flatiron in the US and Bluebird UK signed Walking Each Other Home:
How to Empower Women and Change the World by Melinda Gates.
Scribner won North American rights at auction to a novel, Out of
Darkness, Shining Bright, and a short story collection by Petina Gappah;
the novel is about the last days of explorer David Livingstone (UK
publisher Faber; agent Eric Simonoff at WME).
William Morrow paid six figures for Taylor Adams’ thriller No Exit, which
has sold more than 100,000 copies in its UK edition (Joffe Books); there have
been sales in 19 languages, and film rights have gone to 20th Century Fox.
After a UK auction with 14 bidders, North American rights to
Elizabeth Macneal’s historical novel The Doll Factory went to Emily
Bestler for her eponymous imprint at Atria; there has been a flurry of
international deals (UK publisher Picador; agent Madeleine Milburn).
3
 LONDON SHOW DAILY TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

CAMEO winners presented at the Electric

Adaptations of books by Agatha Christie and Jessie BOOK TO TV BOOK TO STAGE
Burton were among the winners at the CAMEO awards, The Miniaturist Around the World in 80 Days
presented last night at a ceremony at the Electric Cinema Book original by Jessie Book original by Jules Verne
in Notting Hill. Burton (Picador) Adapted by Eighty Days
The CAMEOs (Creativity Across Media: Entertainment Adapted by the Forge Productions
and Originality) are part of the London Book Fair’s Book
& Screen Week satellite programme. Jojo Moyes, the 2018 BOOK TO AUDIO BOOK TO FILM
Book & Screen Week ambassador, was the guest speaker at Murder on the Orient Express Lion
the ceremony. Book original by Agatha Book original by Saroo Brierley
Christie (HarperCollins) (A Long Way Home, Penguin)
BOOK TO GAME Adapted by Audible Studios Adapted by See-Saw Films
(inclusive of apps and entertainment)
Astro’s Cat Solar System
Book original by Dr Dominic
Walliman and Ben Newman
(Flying Eye Books)
Adapted by MiniLab Studios

HC Germany children’s list

HarperCollins Germany is to launch a children’s
publishing list. The list will supplement the company’s
existing YA titles with middle grade fiction and picture
books.
Carina Mathern, editorial director of Friedrich
Oetinger, will join HC Germany as executive editor for
children’s books/YA on 1 August.
Ralf Markmeier, managing director and publisher of
HC Germany, said: “Carina’s great publishing knowledge
in the area of children’s books, as well as her enthusiasm,
will help us continue our growth.”
THE OVAL OFFICE AT OLYMPIA
In the Gallery overlooking the fair is a replica Oval Office and
accompanying Rose Garden, where a “special guest” will
attend a press call this lunchtime (Tuesday 10 April).The
spectacular installation is the creation of Penguin Random
House, and is promoting The President Is Missing, the
forthcoming thriller collaboration between James Patterson
and former US President Bill Clinton.
Publishers in 21 territories have signed The President Is
Missing. In a promotional video, the authors promise lots of

Edna O’Brien receives twists and turns, and say that the novel “will take you right
into the White House”.

honorary DBE
Edna O’Brien has been appointed an honorary DBE, in
recognition of her services to literature.
O’Brien’s awards include the Irish PEN, the Ulysses
Medal, and the 2018 PEN/Nabokov Award for
Achievement in International Literature. She said: “It is
very gratifying to have this Honour bestowed on me, and
all the more so since it is for services to literature. It unites
me in some etheric way to readers I don’t know and is an
incentive, at 88, to keep on going.”
Stephen Page, ceo at her publisher Faber, said: “This is
most welcome recognition of the great Edna O’Brien,
whose international reputation and readership stands as a
testament to her importance and originality, and to the
universal nature of her extraordinary work.”
Young Publishers’ Academy
Tomorrow at Olympia, young students will be videoing,
photographing, interviewing, tweeting and instagramming
as they compile a multimedia report of the day at the fair.
They are at LBF under the auspices of the Young
Publishers’ Academy, which is dedicated to providing state-
educated young people, aged 16 to 23, with masterclasses,
networking opportunities and other introductions to the
publishing world. The academy sits alongside the Young
Journalists’ Academy at the Young Academies Group.
At 10am on Wednesday at the Buzz Theatre, Young
Academies co-director Emily Dinsmore and two recent
Young Journalists’ Academy graduates will provide insights
into the academy’s work.

4
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 LONDON SHOW DAILY
London Book Fair Briefcase 2018
By Nicholas Clee and Neill Denny in London, and Rachel Deahl in New York
UK
AITKEN ALEXANDER
Max Porter follows the award-winning Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
with Lanny, set in an English village where Dead Papa Toothwort is
listening for a mischievous, enchanting boy whose parents have made the
village their home (agent Lisa Baker; Faber UK; Graywolf US; Penguin
Random House Canada; numerous international deals).
DARLEY ANDERSON
One for Sorrow by Phoebe Morgan is set in a picture-perfect village where
dark truths emerge after a teenage girl is found dead (agent Camilla Wray;
HQ UK; options in two languages).
BLAKE FRIEDMANN
Shadowplay, the new novel from Joseph O’Connor, centres on Bram
Stoker’s life in the London theatre world as actor Henry Irving’s assistant,
with dazzling actress Ellen Terry completing the triangle (agent Isobel
Dixon; Harvill Secker UK; Natur och Kultur Sweden; Guanda Italy).
FELICITY BRYAN ASSOCIATES
Publication of In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin
by journalist Lindsey Hilsum will coincide with the launch of the film A
Private War, about Colvin’s life (Chatto UK).
GEORGINA CAPEL ASSOCIATES
Churchill: Walking with Destiny: A Biography by Andrew Roberts is “a
landmark reconsideration of the iconoclastic war leader, based on extensive
new material” (Allen Lane UK; Viking US; numerous international deals).
CASKIE MUSHENS
In Somewhere in the Universe by Lia Louis, Lizzie James sets out to find
her childhood best friend after she receives a letter from him — dated 12
years earlier (agent Juliet Mushens; Orion UK; Planeta Spain; Rizzoli Italy).
CURTIS BROWN
Jessica Barry’s Freefall is “the perfect thriller for the year of #timesup”, using
a propulsive plot to explore the relationships women have with men, their
mothers, their daughters and themselves (agent Felicity Blunt; Harvill Secker
UK; HarperCollins US; numerous international deals; Makeready film).
GREENE & HEATON
Kate Davies’ debut In at the Deep End — ”a hilarious and insightful novel about
love, dating, friendship and relationships” — introduces readers to 20-something
Julia, who has not had sex in three years — but that’s about to change.
HARDMAN & SWAINSON
The Adults by Caroline Hulse is a comedy of errors about an attempt at a
“normal” family holiday by two parents who are divorced but want to spend
Christmas with their daughter (and her imaginary friend) along with their new
partners (agent Caroline Hardman; Orion UK; rights sold in Czech, Dutch, French,
German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian and Slovak).
6
TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
AM HEATH
The Secret World, by leading intelligence expert Christopher Andrew, is
billed as the first international history of espionage (agent Bill Hamilton;
Penguin UK; Yale US).
DAVID HIGHAM (INCORPORATING GREGORY & CO)
Told by multiple voices linked across time, Kate Morton’s The
Clockmaker’s Daughter is a story of murder, mystery and thievery, art,
truth and beauty, love, loss and ghosts (agent Lizzy Kremer; Allen &
Unwin AUS; Macmillan UK; Atria US; numerous international deals).
JANKLOW & NESBIT
Vardo, the first adult novel by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, is inspired by
the real events of the 1621 Norwegian witch trials (agent Hellie Ogden;
UK auction underway).
JULA
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, senior marketing executive at Vintage,
is the painful and comic story of a young black woman looking for love and
finding something very different in its place (Orion UK; Scout Press US).
LBA
Rights to The Nocturnal Brain by Guy Leschziner have been sold to Simon
& Schuster in the UK and St Martin’s Press in the US, with translation rights
sold in the Netherlands, Korea, Portugal, and Russia (agent Luigi Bonomi).
LUTYENS & RUBINSTEIN
The Mobster’s Lament by Ray Celestin is the new novel in the prize-winning
City Blues crime series, this time moving to New York in the 1940s (agent
Jane Finigan; Mantle UK; Dioptra Greece; Southside Stories Sweden).
MADELEINE MILBURN
The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal is a debut historical fiction
snapped up by Picador after a 14-way auction and acquired in a six-
figure deal at US auction by Emily Bestler Books, telling the story of Iris,
a strangely beautiful doll-making apprentice who dreams of being a
painter, and Silas, a lonely collector of morbid curiosities who dreams of
building a museum dedicated to his macabre obsessions (agent Madeleine
Milburn; rights sold in 14 other territories).
ANDREW NURNBERG ASSOCIATES
Jonathan Littell’s first major novel since the Goncourt-winning The
Kindly Ones is An Old Story (Une vieille histoire: nouvelle version), “a
provocative tour-de-force that has drawn comparisons with the works of
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Maurice Blanchot and David Lynch” (Gallimard
France; Hanser Germany; Einaudi Italy; De Arbeiderspers Netherlands;
Wydawnictwo Literackie Poland; Galaxia Gutenberg Spain).
PEAKE ASSOCIATES
Jonathan Coe’s new novel Middle England deals with British public and
private life in the years 2010-2018, and reintroduces characters from The
Continues on page 8 g
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
f Continued from page 6
Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle (Viking UK).
PEW LITERARY
The Edge of the World by Laura Cumming is a narrative non-fiction
proposal by the art critic and winner in 2017 of the James Tait Black
prize: “a deflected memoir of how the author’s mother was kidnapped as
a child, threaded through with reflections on art and its intimate role in
the lives of both mother and daughter” (Chatto UK; Scribner US).
PFD
James Delargy’s 55 is a debut thriller set in a remote Western Australian
town that has been swallowed whole by the hunt for a serial killer (agent
Marilia Savvides; Simon & Schuster US; numerous international deals).
SHEIL LAND ASSOCIATES
Once Upon a River is the new novel by Diane Setterfield, author of The Thirteenth
Tale (agent Vivien Green; Transworld UK Atria US; Doubleday Canada).
WME
Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah is a novel about the
journey made by David Livingstone’s companions on deciding that he
must be buried at home (agent Eric Simonoff; Faber UK).
THE WYLIE AGENCY
The second novel by Sally Rooney, author of the prize-winning
Conversations with Friends, is Normal People, the story of two people
from the west of Ireland at Trinity College Dublin (Faber UK; Hogarth
US; Knopf Canada; several international deals).
BARBARA J ZITWER
The Plotters by Un-su Kim, translated by Sora Kim Russell, is a Korean
novel about an organisations of assassins, and has been signed up by 4th
Estate UK, Doubleday US, Random House Canada, Text ANZ, and
numerous international territories.
US
ELYSE CHENEY LITERARY ASSOCIATES
The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House by Ben
Rhodes (US: Random House, June)
The deputy national security advisor under President Barack Obama
offers a behind-the-scenes account of his presidency.
Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change by
Beth Comstock (US: Currency, Sept)
The former vice chair of GE and past president of Integrated Media at
NBC Universal shares lessons learned over a 30-year career devoted to
spotting trends and driving innovation.
THE CLEGG AGENCY
American Prison by Shane Bauer (US: Penguin Press, Sept)
The agency calls this Mother Jones senior reporter’s account of his
undercover infiltration of a Louisiana private prison, and the American
penal system itself, “shocking and timely”.
Someday by David Levithan (US: Knopf, Oct)
In the sequel to Every Day, the bestselling author and Scholastic
Books publisher/editorial director takes readers further into the lives
8
TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
of A, Rhiannon, Nathan, and the person they think they know as
Reverend Poole.
DEFIORE & CO
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (US: Mariner, May)
In a debut story collection that the agency calls “surreal and
heartbreaking”, Adjei-Brenyah examines what it’s like to be young and
black in America.
Visualizing the Beatles by John Pring and Robert Thomas (US: Dey
Street, May)
Two graphic designers and Beatles geeks offer bespoke full-colour
infographics of the Fab Four.
FOUNDRY LITERARY + MEDIA
Era of Ignition by Amber Tamblyn (US: Crown, 2019)
The actress, director, and poet is “the public voice for female anger”, the
agency says, and her book “illustrates the current state of feminism in
America via her own interactions with it”.
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (US: Crown, pub date not available)
This is the sequel to Cline’s bestselling Ready Player One, which was
recently adapted into a film directed by Steven Spielberg.
THE GERNERT COMPANY
Whiskey When We’re Dry: A Novel by John Larison (US: Viking, Aug)
From a writer the agency calls “a blazing new voice in fiction” comes this
gritty tale about a young woman who disguises herself as a boy and
heads west across the mountains to find her outlaw brother.
The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the
Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre (US: Doubleday, Sept)
The author of Paraliterary recounts the history of the personality test,
devised a century ago by a pair of homemakers.
SANFORD J GREENBURGER ASSOCIATES
How To Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to
Verse by Thomas C Foster (US: HarperPerennial, Apr)
From the bestselling author of How To Read Literature like a Professor
comes a primer on verse.
What Should Be Wild by Julia Fine (US: HarperCollins, May)
In her debut novel, Fine tells the story of Maisie Cothay, who was born
with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch.
ICM PARTNERS (HANDLED BY CURTIS BROWN)
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment by
Francis Fukuyama US: FSG, Sept)
In his examination of modern identity politics, the author of the bestselling
The Origins of Political Order warns that unless we forge a universal
understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.
Then by Siri Hustvedt (US: S&S, Feb 2019)
In her latest novel, Hustvedt writes about an aging writer working on her
memoir, who looks back at diary entries from her first year in New York.
INKWELL MANAGEMENT
The Perfect Weapon by David E Sanger (US: Crown, June)
The chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times looks at
how cyberwarfare is influencing elections, threatening national security,
and bringing us to the brink of global war.
Continues on page 10 g
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The Year We Were Born by Claire Lombardo (US: Doubleday, spring/
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An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green (US: Dutton, Sept)
The co-creator of the YouTube channels Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, and
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 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

Welcome to LBF
Namaste, Anyang hasayo,
Wilkommen and Laipni
Ludzam — this week, the
BUILD+BECOME
international book world THE NEW SERIES FROM THE QUARTO GROUP
comes to Olympia and
we wish everyone a TH O U G HT- PROVO KIN G : To d ay ’s re lev a nt to p i c s
warm welcome, writes d i s ti lle d by exp e r t s into 20 a p p ro a ch a b le le s s o n s .
Jacks Thomas, director
of LBF. V I S UA LLY- LE D : G r a p h i c s exp l a i n key co n ce pt s i n
a n e n j oy a b le , e a s y-re a d i n g , co lle c t a b le fo rm at .
The linguists among
us will know that the PR AC TI C A L : Re a d e r s c a n d i re c tly a p p ly n ew
last above is Latvian, in Jacks Thomas
k n ow le d g e to th e i r d ay-to -d ay l i ve s to h e l p
honour of the Baltic states,
our Market Focus region “We have our n av i g ate th e ch a n g in g wo r ld a ro u n d th e m .

this year. Huge thanks first ever Poet

to Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania in creating such of the Fair,
LAUNCHING MAY 2018
a great Market Focus Imtiaz
programme this year. The
year 2018 is the centenary of Dharker.”
the restoration of the
independence of the Baltic states, so it is the perfect time to
celebrate their literature and culture.
This week 25,000 delegates from more than 130
countries will come to historic and iconic Olympia, and we
extend a particularly warm welcome to Kazakhstan,
Catalonia and Wales, all of whom are exhibiting for the
first time; we are delighted to have you here in London.
Of course, London Book Fair is a rights fair and the
place to come to understand the business of publishing.
For the first time, audio publishing took centre stage
at our Quantum conference (which was yesterday,
Monday 9th April), where half the day was focussed on
audiobooks, and this attention will be reflected by more
audio exhibitors and a growing buzz about audio content
and rights across the Fair.
We are turning the spotlight on poetry too, in recognition
of the phenomenal success of some of the “Insta-poets”.
We have our first ever Poet of the Fair, Imtiaz Dharker, who
PUBLISHING OCT 2018

will be at the vanguard of a whole programme of poetry

events and talks — April is the coolest month at this year’s
LBF, as Eliot might have put it.
Cross-media events and discussion will also be more
significant. For the third year the Cross Media Rights
Exchange will attract people from television, radio, film,
games and other media, and we have our first ever Cross
Media Author of the Day in Charlie Adlard, the
British comic book artist and Comics Laureate.
Outside of LBF there are many events taking place to
celebrate literature as part of London Book & Screen
Week, including a celebration of Frankenstein and Mary
Shelley, and afternoon tea in celebration of Agatha
Christie. Here’s to books in all their iterations. We hope
you have a great fair. ■
BE IN THE KNOW. VISIT STAND 6D105
BUILDBECOME.COM @BUILDBECOME
 Visit Stand 7G10a TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

Recommended Readings Books in the era of ‘peak

from IMF Publications A few years ago, digital thinkers wondered if TV’s days were

Gender and
numbered, writes Michael Bhaskar. Younger viewers were
watching less and less. More channels fragmented the audience,
making those water cooler moments, let alone nationally

Economics
significant event-viewing, much rarer. The schedules were being
filled with reality dross while shiny new media, from games to the
internet, were growing in popularity. The equivalences to book
publishing were clear: despite still being an information and
entertainment powerhouse, TV was, in the long run, done for.
Like publishing, it didn’t play out like that. Instead TV hit a
widely acknowledged Golden Age, overhauled Hollywood as
the epicentre of experiment, ambition and talent, successfully
The gender gap
rode the digital revolution and arguably became the signature
is shrinking, but
cultural form of our time. In fact TV is now so much the
progress remains
dominant storytelling mode it’s worth asking in detail what
uneven. This book
reviews approaches this era of “peak TV” means for publishing.
to chip away at the
barriers preventing Parallel forces
women from So what happened? The story is dictated by two parallel forces.
achieving their full On the one hand having marquee franchises that encourage
economic potential. repeat subscriptions became absolutely essential. You needed
$35. Paperback properties that would keep people locked in to their bundles.
ISBN 978-15135903-6 For smaller channels, they needed to ensure they wouldn’t be
dropped from the offering. This in turn lead to the global
escalation in prices for sports and the creation of “must-have”
series: Mad Men, for example, almost single handedly kept
network AMC in subscription bundles. Secondly there was the
demise of so-called “linear” viewing with the rise of internet-
The challenges enabled on-demand services exemplified by the BBC iPlayer
of growth, job and Netflix. In the background was a new drive to quality
creation, starting with shows like The West Wing and The Sopranos. The
and inclusion are result was a revolution in output, from the gangland realism of
closely intertwined. The Wire to the vaulting ambition of Game of Thrones.
This volume looks Thanks to this new equation more and more quality TV is
at the gender gap being produced: up to 400 major shows a year and rising quickly.
from an economic Netflix alone will spend $8 billion on producing original content
point of view. this year. It will air more than 700 series, including a rapidly
$30 Paperback growing segment of non-English language work. But as a tech
ISBN 978-1-51351-610-3 giant Netflix is hardly alone in this. Amazon Studios, which
spent a reported $4.5 billion on material in 2017, is still
growing. Apple is also looking to move into production, and
hired two senior executives from Sony TV to spearhead the

Bookstore.imf.org/PW418a
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
efforts. In the UK they have taken on ex-BBC and Channel 4
veteran Jay Hunt. Everyone else, from ITV to NBC, is playing
catch-up, forced to invest in big budget series to compete. The
result is we swim in a sea of high quality box set TV.
At one level this is great news for fiction publishers. In
our age of shrinking attention spans, nothing proves there is
still an appetite for deep, complex, involving, lengthy stories
like this renaissance. People don’t just want superficial
entertainment; they want characters and stories of a genuinely
novelistic kind. They want big ideas, bold concepts. Novels
have done this for centuries and can still do so. Secondly it
provides a rejuvenated market for adaptation rights. Whether

12
 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

TV’
it’s The Handmaid’s Tale,
Westworld or Altered Carbon
many of the biggest series
start life as books; whenever
such an adaptation occurs, as
with film, it gives book sales a
huge boost. It brings up front
cash to the rights owner and
provides some reassurance:
books and publishing are
still the wellspring of
storytelling genius. Michael Bhaskar

The risk for books

And yet it would be foolish not to see a risk here. Books
and reading are clearly extremely different experiences to
watching TV. Above all, reading is still the most personal and
imaginative form of entertainment we have. The threat is, then,
not direct; good TV doesn’t hurt good books, both coexist. But
it does add pressure to a crowded market for attention. Every
box set started is, potentially, a novel unread; and whereas
nobody would see watching Big Brother as an analogous
experience, some might think that of serious TV. We don’t have
much time and headspace, and the siren call of the box set is
both easy and rewarding. I have huge faith in the novel, but we
in publishing have to constantly think how we can carve out
time for our products in the face of this investment onslaught.
Which brings the second and related danger. A Netflix
subscription starts at £5.99 a month. Amazon bundles its TV in
with Prime. If you use the internet and watch football, the bulk of
your Sky subscription is a footnote. TV of course, has always been
free. A few years ago the fact people were paying for content like
this at all would have been regarded as a victory. But compared
to your Prime membership, a £20 hardback starts to look very
expensive. Linear TV was a different beast to a book; but again,
a box set on Netflix is a closer fit and hence a value challenge.
Regardless of whether this really is peak TV or the Golden Age,
lessons can be drawn. One is that series are still so important. In
the ebook market we see that in a heightened way. Another, again
reassuringly, is that quality matters; quality does get people talking.
Thirdly it’s noteworthy that the tech giants have turned their
attention away from books and towards this area; this gives us
some breathing space, but also makes building new audiences and
reaching new markets harder. In turn this has created a new data-
driven form of commissioning still alien to publishing. Fourthly
TV is now fully international; such are the budgets of the major
series that even the vast US domestic market is insufficient to
support them. Series are global phenomena, or they won’t work.
Lastly and above all, the lesson I take is this: that an extreme
drive towards creative quality is an incredible bulwark against
talk of decline. ■

Michael Bhaskar is co-founder and publishing director of the digital

publisher Canelo. He is the author of Curation: The Power of Selection in
a World of Excess and can be found on Twitter @michaelbhaskar.

13

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by Kevin Charles Smith
Book One Book Two
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Book Three- Demon Pirate
Releasing September 19, 2018
See Us at London Book Fair
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TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
Good morning, Vietnam
Barbara Zitwer introduces ‘the TLS of
Southeast Asia’
After discovering Tran Dan’s
lost masterpiece Crossroads
and Lampposts last year and
having it pre-empted by
Juliet Mabey for Oneworld,
I set sail for Southeast Asia.
Surely there must be many
talented writers there just
waiting to be discovered, I
reasoned. Luckily, my first
port of call was the Mekong
Review, founded by Minh Minh Bui Jones
Bui Jones,who was born in
Vietnam and raised in Australia from age nine. On his first
trip back to Vietnam in his 20s, Minh realised the power of
language when he saw his father flourish while speaking
his native Vietnamese. This man, who in Australia had
fumbled for words, was a storyteller, a real raconteur! It
made a deep impression on Minh, and sowed the seeds of
his landmark and breakthrough literary magazine.
The literary scene and readers in Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Brunei,
Timor-Leste and Singapore were just waiting for the Mekong
Review, and it has rapidly become the TLS (Times Literary
Supplement) of Southeast Asia. Writers, publishers, editors
and storytellers are flooding his office with manuscripts,
books, galleys and letters. The literary floodgates have
opened. The Southeast Asian population is young and
bursting with brave new kinds of writing. A good many
people write in English. “There are two kinds of books,”
Minh told me. “Those that are beautifully written and those
that aren’t but have the most compelling stories to tell.”
Minh commissions writers to offer fresh perspective and
help us dig deeper into all kinds of subjects. Michael Uhl
contributed a revelatory reappraisal of the My Lai massacre on
the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. Minh felt a female
perspective was sorely missing from discussion of Graham
Greene’s The Quiet American, and assigned Vietnamese writer
Mai Huyen Chi to re-read the book and write about it. Her
essay is heartbreaking and fresh, and allows us to see Greene’s
masterpiece anew. An extract from a first novel, Jamie Marina
Lau’s Pink Mountain on Locust Island, made my head spin.
The Mekong Review is a must read — and I do not say only
because I am representing it now! In Asia, Minh distributes
the journal himself; it sells out immediately. Scribd will sell
it in the US, and several of the best bookstores will stock it.
We’re plotting for global distribution. Minh Bui Jones has
big plans for his magazine, including Mekong Review
Books one day in the not too distant future. I invite you to
read for yourself at https://mekongreview.com/. ■
 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

Author of the Day

Nicholas Clee caught up with
bestselling author Joanna
Trollope, today’s Author of
the Day, in the run up to LBF.

NC: Have you been to a The 49th Mystic

Beyond the Circle #1
book fair before? 978-0-8007-3493-0 • £8.99p
JT: I have no wish to show off, May 2018
but I couldn’t actually count the Some say the great myster y of
number of book fairs I’ve been how one can live in two realities
at once is only the stuff of dreams.
to over the last 40 years. I really
Joanna Trollope They are wrong. The New York Times
like them — all that energy bestselling master of suspense
generated by grubby but vital old commerce is a salutary reminder takes you on a mind-bending, epic
that the ivory tower is all very well, but it doesn’t pay the bills… journey where everything you think
NC: What are you hoping to find? you know is about to change.

JT: I hope to find what I always hope to find, which is

human connection and contact. This is a deeply “people”
business, and that’s the element I’ll be looking for.
NC: Some authors can be dismayed by fairs, because of Rise of the Mystics
the contrast between the solitary business of writing and Beyond the Circle #2
978-0-8007-3504-3 • £8.99p
the huge industry that sustains it. Will this disconcert you? October 2018
JT: As my books are very much about people, and the aim of Master of suspense Ted Dekker
them is to help start the conversation about something that might returns with Rise of the Mystics,
be difficult to discuss, I actually welcome the interaction and — the powerhouse conclusion to
speaking personally — would find any sense of being removed the sweeping, two-novel quest
that began with The 49th Mystic.
from the press of the world more disconcerting than anything. Humanity is days from falling into
NC: Pan Macmillan, as a present welcoming you to the darkness forever and only one girl
list, gave you what must have been one of your busiest ever can bring it back from the brink.
But first she must find the Five
publicity schedules. Did you enjoy it?
Seals of Truth, a quest she was
JT: It has been a terrific tour. The focus was on independent born to undertake, or die tr ying.
bookshops — so heartening to see their revival! — and they
produced wonderful audiences. Of course the travel is a bit
wearing, but how else would I get to meet the readers?
NC: Some of us find that our understanding of younger
generations grows ever sketchier. Yet your novels remain Hidden Peril
current. How do you manage this? Code of Honor #2
JT: I think I might be someone whose natural focus is not so IRENE HANNON
978-0-8007-2769-7 • £8.99p
much the past, as the present and the future — which is simply
October 2018
a matter of how one IS. I am fascinated by what makes people All is well in Kristin Dane’s life until,
tick, and how human preoccupations shift and change as cultural one by one, people connected to her
tides ebb and flow, and codes of conduct alter with current local fair trade shop begin to die.
It’s up to Detective Luke Carter to
attitudes. So perhaps I am just very luckily designed to be master-
find and stop the ruthless master
interested in the changes that progress inevitably brings about? mind behind the killings before it’s
NC: You have a generous view of the world: most of the people too late.
in your novels are trying to be decent. Is that a fair summary?
JT: Very much so. I am definitely of the glass half full camp. It’s
not that I don’t believe in the existence of evil — I certainly do —
but my belief is that most people are trying to do the right thing,
and more human calamity happens because of muddle than out
of malice. For example, it isn’t so surprising to me that ugly
episodes happen on the London Tube. Of course they do. But
what does surprise me is that they don’t happen all the time, Available from Macmillan Distribution
especially given the grisly travel conditions that most people have
to endure on their commute. That kind of sums up my view. ■

309220_LondonBookFairPW_0418.indd 1 15 3/20/18 2:56 PM

 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Writers as readers, publishers as curators
Print books are dead! Ebooks are dead!
People don’t read any more! Over the last
few years in publishing and bookselling
we’ve been assaulted by a rollcall of
apparent certainties, writes Nick Wells. As a
creative industry wrought with hand-
wringing good intentions we’ve suffered the
harsh slap of reality with the growing pains
of corporatisation, globalisation and
the acceleration of technological change.
However, it might not be obvious, but the
number of people reading, and the number Nick Wells
of places and formats they can express their
passion for ideas, entertainment and information continues
to increase, and it’s our job to find these readers, listen to
them, engage and deliver.
As a publisher (and this is more acute to us as we launch
our new fiction imprint, Flame Tree Press), we seek to
balance the social and cultural changes that drive
faster choice, greater flexibility and instant access, with the
authenticity and voice that fulfils the underlying needs of
our readers. A book which takes two years to write,
another few months to edit and publish, can be chosen,
downloaded in minutes, then read over a few short
days. The major chains and wholesalers need presentation
many months ahead of publication, while a self-published
author can upload their file and start seeing sales the next
day. Such are the tensions and mediations in the business of
publishing. We seek a balance between all factors, while
trying to pay the bills, keep control of stock, rally the staff
and the retailers, build the brand and please the readers.
Writers as readers
Ultimately, of course, we exist because of the reader. And in
many cases, particularly genre fiction of horror, crime, SF
and fantasy, the reader is also a writer, perhaps not
published yet, but has submitted stories for a magazine
(HG Wells, Dickens, HP Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury all read
obsessively, and appeared in magazines first). Our new
imprint is focused on genre fiction, and it’s easy to identify
that such large, intersecting readerships thrive because of
their enthusiasm. They consume their passion for the
imagination through the medium of streaming TV, movies,
books, magazines and blogs, and associate online in forums
and through website comment threads, and at reader
groups and author signings. These enthusiasts, they often
want to try their hand, they experiment, become writers,
show their friends, email their manuscripts to free, then
paid-for, markets. Some sell their work, some fail, but they
still love what they do.
Such like-minded people tend to gather in the obvious
places online, and reading groups in clubs, pubs, bookshops,
libraries and cafes. To engage, publishers must be authentic
and transparent. The modern consumer is sophisticated, they
16
TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
understand the transaction with a business,
but if the writing is good, the imagination and
the worlds appropriate, they’ll give it a fair
hearing. Building communities in 2018 is
more exciting because there are more
opportunities to meet people from around the
world, instantly, and to make connections and
listen to new perceptions. Although based in
the UK, more than 80% of our submissions
come from North America, and as we publish
worldwide, that means we can offer beautiful
printed books anywhere our writers and
readers choose to place themselves. It’s even
led us to hire New Yorker Don D’Auria as our executive
editor for Flame Tree Press.
Publishers as curators
At the height of the print-book burning in 2010, when
ebooks seemed to be headlighting the consumer with their
novel charms, sage online journals such as Fast Company
observed that “curation is here to stay”. Of course, anyone
with a mite of historical perspective would have been glad
for the curation of the Alexandrian Library, more than 2,000
years before. In recent years though, once the collective
bewilderment of book publishers had passed, it became clear
that the curation of the highly-geared start-ups with their
get-rich quick investor plans was merely a new way of doing
what a publisher does: collating, preserving and delivering
carefully considered knowledge, news, literature and
entertainment. With our clumsy supply chain apparatus and
fussy needs for accuracy and citation, publishing has come
into its own, again. Content management strategies,
analytics, even big data, these require good curation, and
although the world now converses on a mobile device of
some sort, the means of communication firmly includes the
published book, in a variety of formats: it’s a delivery
mechanism of curated content designed for durability and
accessibility. And as such it’s a mark of validation, a precious
moment in time.
There is no question that we move in ever faster times,
culturally, socially, technologically, but as publishers and
booksellers we’ve learned to work harder, in partnership
with authors, and readers, to understand the needs of our
customers, because when we go home at night, use our
smartphones and tablets, stream a box-set or watch a
YouTube video, we engage with the real world. And that’s
where our readers are, our writers, so that’s what we curate
for — we find, listen, engage and deliver. ■
Nick Wells is publisher and founder of Flame Tree Publishing.
He will be taking part in the following events: Building Communities:
Writers as Readers, Publishers as Curators, or How to Encourage New
Writers and Still Sleep? (today from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, Club Room,
National Hall Gallery); and Why We Commissioned These Debuts
(tomorrow from 1.45pm to 2.30pm, Author HQ Theatre).
 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
Children’s book sales, home and away
Nielsen’s latest research shows that children’s book sales in 2017 held their own
against a magical year in 2016, Jaclyn Swope reports
Sales of Children’s books in the UK fell short in 2017, but
we can point to at least one distinct reason for that
decline: 2016 saw Harry Potter & the Cursed Child earn
£16m through BookScan from 1.5m copies. In the end,
sales were down only £90k and 1.1m units in 2017, with
growth across both established and emerging authors
helping to close the gap. This follows consistent years of
growth since 2013, culminating in 2016 as the highest-
earning year for children’s books since BookScan began.
Which makes 2017 the second-highest year, and I think
we can all agree that that makes for a good time to be in
the business of children’s books.
Now that the market decline stat is out of the way, onto
the positives: internationally, six of the countries covered
by BookScan grew their children’s sales in 2017, with only
the UK, Spain and South Africa in decline. Amongst the
top ten global bestselling titles (across editions and
translations), five were children’s or crossover books: Bad
Dad by David Walliams, Good Night Stories for Rebel
Girls by Francesca Cavallo and Elena Favilli, The
Getaway by Jeff Kinney, The World’s Worst Children 2 by
David Walliams and Guinness World Records 2018. If we
look at total author sales, the leading name in six
countries was a children’s author — Geronimo Stilton in
Italy and Spain, Andy Griffiths in Australia, David
Walliams in Ireland and New Zealand, and Julia
Donaldson in the UK — and in the remaining three, a
children’s author was still second.
Back in the UK, there were plenty of successes
throughout the year:
• The books for the 20th anniversary of World Book
Day sold more than a million copies by the end of
March, marking the highest year yet for the annual
event.
• The School Textbooks and Study Guides category
grew 11% for the year, with the four weeks ending
7th October marking the highest sales period ever for
the category as recorded by BookScan.
• Children’s General Non-Fiction, which includes
books like Fantastically Great Women Who Changed
the World, the Usborne See Inside series, Women in
Science and A Poem for Every Night of the Year,
posted the highest year-end growth in the sector, with
the majority of the leading sub-categories within non-
fiction achieving increased sales.
• Children’s Fiction remained the largest area of the
children’s market, and of the top 20 authors, 12
increased their sales compared to 2016, helping to
shrink the post-Cursed Child decline. David Walliams
led the way, with Bad Dad marking his fastest seller yet.
LONDON SHOW DAILY
Much prefer non-fiction
9%
Slightly prefer
non-fiction Much prefer
8% fiction
34%
Like Slightly
equally prefer fiction
33% 16%
Preference for fiction vs non-fiction (2017)
• While Young Adult Fiction declined once again, sales
for YA books that aren’t part of a series grew,
accounting for about 42% of the category compared
to 33% in 2016. Leading non-series authors that grew
or debuted include Nicola Yoon, Jay Asher, John
Green, Karen McManus and Emery Lord.
According to Nielsen’s annual Understanding the
Children’s & YA Book Consumer 2017, half of all 0-25s
preferred fiction to non-fiction in 2017, with escapism,
excitement and humour ranking as the most important
characteristics for fiction. Funny stories were deemed the
top genre for 0-13s, but fantasy/adventure gained in
popularity. When switching to 14-25s, fantasy/adventure
ranks at the top, followed by crime/thriller and sci-fi/
fantasy. (Switching back to BookScan, we saw growth in
sales of YA print books categorised as fantasy & magical
realism, thrillers, fantasy romance and crime/mystery.)
In terms of reading frequency, the Understanding the
Children’s & YA Book Consumer 2017 study found that
75% of 0-17s and 55% of 18-25s were reading weekly for
fun in 2017, with 46% and 26% respectively doing so
daily. Weekly reading saw an 2% increase compared to
2016, with that increase coming from audiobook listening
for 18-25s and book reading from under-17s.
Audiobooks were increasingly appealing to children
and YAs, with relaxation remaining the most widespread
reason behind using or liking the format. Interest in
audio was also more greatly attributed to audiobooks
Continues on page 18 g
17
 LONDON SHOW DAILY TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

f Continued from page 17

helping to pass the time,
narration bringing the books to
life, and audiobooks helping
with children’s reading or
allowing for reading along.
But even with the wider
interest in audio (mirroring a
trend seen across adult books as
well), printed formats were still
liked more (by 86% of 0-25s)
than digital formats. Print books Share of the UK market covered by children's books over ten years
were liked for their look and
feel, ease of use and as a break Nielsen Book will be hosting its third annual UK
from screens/technology (for those 8+), while digital Children’s Summit on the morning of Thursday 12th
reading popularity was attributed to liking technology April in the Club Room at London Book Fair. With
and, for those 8+, being able to carry more around and speakers from children’s publishers, Booktrust and the
save space. EmpathyLab, as well as a panel of children’s booksellers,
And to bring this full circle — children’s book sales it promises to be a fascinating morning with a valuable
were down in 2017, so how do we get more children insight into the state of the children’s market both home
reading? As in recent years, more interesting books and a and away, as well as the UK children’s consumer. Tickets
bedtime reading routine continued to be the top things can be purchased at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/
that might encourage children and YAs to read more, but nielsen-book-uk-childrens-summit-2018-
increasingly there is recognition that only by restricting tickets-40835824049. ■
time spent on other activities (TV, gaming and phones, for
example) would it be possible for them to read more. Jaclyn Swope is publisher account manager, Nielsen Book Research.

Visit Stand 6C99

to learn about opportunities
for translation rights
Magination Press publishes books that promote healthy social
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18
 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
Muslim children’s books
Babar Maqbool looks at how this market is maturing
Islamic children’s publishing is a unique market.
Muslim parents are eager to find books that instil a
basic Islamic education and reflect the values of the
faith. But scholars of the religion are the primary
resource for writing them, and finding suitable
authors and illustrators, ones who understand the
material and have the skills to portray the stories
with veracity and sensitivity for children, is difficult.
My company, Maqbool Books, started by my father and based
in Lahore, Pakistan, has taken on this challenge and, perhaps by
caveat, has become a leading publisher in the field, producing
books that include illustrated stories from the Holy Quran, stories
from the life of the prophets and prayer books for young readers.
It should come as no surprise that our biggest markets are
Muslim-majority nations, including Pakistan, Malaysia and
the United Arab Emirates. The market for our titles in the
Middle East in the Levant has potential, but is curtailed by
distribution issues. And our strongest growth markets are in
places that have large, foreign Muslim communities, including
the United States, Australia and Denmark. The books are often
dual language, Arabic-English editions, and most are
UNDERSTANDING THE
CHILDREN’S & YA BOOK
CONSUMER 2017
WHAT WERE CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS SPENDING THEIR
LEISURE TIME DOING IN 2017?
● 75% of 0-17s read print books weekly for fun, up 2%
from 2016
● There has been an increase in the number of 'heavy-
readers' among boys aged 11-17 since 2013
● Over 8s recognise that print books provide a break from
screen/technology usage
There is an increased desire among children to read books with
characters they can identify with and books linked to TV and film.
To purchase the report or for more information, email:
infobookresearch@nielsen.com
4131_Kids_Summit_HP_advert_BookBrunch_130x185.indd 1
LONDON SHOW DAILY
hardcovers; they typically sell for the equivalent
of $11.99 in developed markets, and are priced
lower for less prosperous countries.
We have benefited from the decision of some
developing economies to tailor their education
policies to be more inclusive, and others have
sanctioned programmes to enhance reading among
Muslim children. Our bestselling Islamic title is a book of small
prayers that nearly every Muslim parent will teach their children,
Duas for Me and My Family. What makes our book special is that
it is published with the Arabic text transliterated into Western
phonetics, allowing a child who is not fluent in Arabic to read
along and pray on their own. The book has sold some 200,000
copies, even where we didn’t expect sales, such as Scandinavia.
This is just one example demonstrating how much potential
there is for Islamic books in the broader market, provided they
are published with expertise and sensitivity. Going forward, we
are excited by the knowledge that there are just so many books
yet to be published, and so many more parents and children
waiting to read them. ■
Babar Maqbool is the director of business development, Maqbool Books.
FIND OUT MORE
AT STAND 6D101
19
29/03/2018 10:30
 LONDON SHOW DAILY TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018

The underworld is flat

Some 50 years after Putnam first published Peter
Maas’s classic The Valachi Papers, based on his
interviews with American La Cosa Nostra soldier-
turned-government witness Joe Valachi, organised
crime books have surged in popularity. And, writes
Lenny Picker, the latest wave of books suggest the
subject has become much more international.
Journalist Misha Glenny’s McMafia: A Journey
Through the Global Criminal Underworld
(Knopf, 2008) gave many their first glimpse into
the realities of Russian organised crime. But this May, Mark
Galeotti, one of law-enforcement’s go-to experts on
transnational criminal conspiracies, goes further and deeper
in The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia (Yale
University Press). The book is based in part on his
own interviews with members of organisations
whose appetite for violence has become the stuff
of legend. Heather McCallum, Managing Director
and Publisher of Yale University Press’ London
office, says she was convinced to publish Galeotti’s
work after hearing his account of the Vory’s
origins; many Russian gangs perceived themselves
as “heroic anti-totalitarian radicals” who “actively
resisted corrupt authority” in the horrific Stalinist
era — albeit with their own brand of horror.
Russians are also featured in criminology
professor Federico Varese’s just published Mafia
Life: Love, Death and Money at the Heart of
Organised Crime (Oxford University Press,
March). Varese combines investigative journalism,
ethnography, police data and interviews with
criminals to explore “what it means to live the life
of a Mafioso,” and includes studies of the Japanese
Yakuza and Chinese triads, in addition to crime gangs in
Italy and the US. Editor James Cook says he was drawn to
the “historical, social and economic context”
Varese’s provides, essential to understanding “the
role of mafias in the world today”.
In a timely work given the realities of life in small-
town America today, Haroon K Ullah’s House of
Heroin: Inside the Secret Billion-Dollar Narco-Terror
Empire That Is Killing America (Morrow, July) looks
at the international roots of America’s opioid crisis.
Ullah, who served on the US Secretary of State’s
Policy Planning Staff, says his 15 years spent in the
border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan led him

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 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
to understand how these “narco networks”
operate. “The Afghan families operate like the
new Sopranos,” he observes. “These gangsters
have wide networks with extremist groups and
rarely take no for an answer. Nothing has been
able to stop them, not foreign governments, world
superpowers, Fortune 500 companies, nor the best
of the best Navy SEALS.”
Not every new work in the organised crime
category is cause for despair, however. In 2015,
journalist Alex Perry (who takes pride in having been
convicted in Zimbabwe of being a “determined and
resourceful journalist”) was reporting about the
Sicilian mafia’s involvement in the Mediterranean
migration crisis when he stumbled upon an amazing
story of determination and courage by attending a
play about Maria Concetta Cacciola, who was
killed after testifying against the ‘Ndrangheta.
Perry recounts the story in The Good
Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who
Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia
(Morrow, June). Despite his extensive
experience reporting on organised crime, Perry
LONDON SHOW DAILY
had never heard of the ‘Ndrangheta, which he has
since learned is the most powerful organised crime
syndicate on the planet, raking in $50 to $100
billion a year — roughly 3.5% of Italian GDP, with
a presence in more than 100 countries. “They are
so embedded in the financial centres of New York,
London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo that
they have become an indispensable part of the
global economy,” he says.
And Tim Newark provides a fascinating historical
look at organised crime in the UK, with Empire of Crime:
Opium and the Rise of Organized Crime in the British Empire
(Skyhorse, March). Newark explains how the British Empire
was once at the forefront of fighting organised crime
around the world. But Great Britain’s decision to end
its lucrative export of opium from Imperial India to
China in 1908 “unleashed a century of criminality,”
he concludes. “Just as America’s misguided
prohibition of alcohol made illicit fortunes for the
Mafia, so organised crime within the British Empire
grew rich on its trade in illegal narcotics in the 20th
century,” he argues. “Sometimes the best intentions can
lead to the worst results.” ■
21
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Sharing experiences in Memphis
Rosamund de la Hey reports on the ABA Winter Institute in Memphis, in January
Since moving from publisher at Bloomsbury to
bookseller at Mainstreet, one of the most positive
elements has been the collegiate spirit among
fellow booksellers. I joined the Booksellers
Association (BA) before we even opened the
shop, and have been on the Council since 2011,
serving briefly as vice president, and am now
nearing the end of a two-year term as president.
One of the many privileges of this role has
been the opportunity to attend the American
Booksellers Association (ABA)’s annual Winter
Institute. The event visits a different US city Rosamund de la Hey
every year, and this time we were off to
Memphis, Tennessee. A large group of us from the UK (a mix
of booksellers, wholesalers and BA staff) arrived to join more
than 700 US booksellers for the four-day conference.
Winter Institute always hosts a first night drinks reception for
their international visitors. This year, it was a very different affair
with the venue being the Civil Rights Museum, housed in the very
motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was easily
one of the most moving (living) museums I have ever experienced;
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TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
it set a very thoughtful tone for the week, which
began, appropriately enough, with a bus drive to
the deep south, elegantly narrated by local author
Jamie Kornegay and taking in his former business,
TurnRow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi.
Back in Memphis Junot Díaz blew everyone
away with his passionate keynote speech
about his own experience of immigration:
“In my experience, to immigrate as a child is
to be thrown into a hurricane. To be a young
immigrant is to survive an apocalypse, an
apocalypse that devours your world, and hurls
you naked and voiceless into another,” he said.
“Nothing else can do justice to that impossible dislocation.
Immigration really is as close as many of us will come to
living through an end of a world.”
In keeping with that US tradition, Winter Institute always hosts
a “Town Hall” meeting where the ABA Board take questions from
members, and issues of the moment are discussed. The previous
year in Minneapolis, the conference was held a week after Trump’s
inauguration, and feelings were running high at the Town Hall
session with much of the focus on the lack of diversity in the
room and on the podium. To their credit the ABA Board have
acted, and this year’s meeting was a very different affair with
much positive action in evidence, though a sober mood prevailed
when one delegate talked of her own mother’s real fear of being
deported, despite living in the US since she was a child.
The ABA’s Winter Institute has much in common with our
own BA Conference. There was much sharing of experience
(“bookshop tourism” is alive and well in the US and indeed
New Zealand), and of course, the best ideas are often those
gleaned over a beer, outwith the official programme — if
that takes place at Elvis’ Graceland, so much the better.
This year at Winter Institute, the supply chain and systems (oh
the glamour) were the big hit, with US booksellers embracing the
notion of Batch as a time and money-saving winner; while I finally
saw the potential in Edelweiss for the UK, assuming that is we can
get all publishers signed up. It has the capacity to be a real game
changer, driving better, more efficient ordering and bookshop
curation, without undermining the crucial role of the rep.
Finally, I wouldn’t be a proper bookseller if I didn’t finish
with a shout out for the book of the moment, Tara Westover’s
extraordinary memoir, Educated. Having first heard about it
at the BA Conference last September, it turned out to be the
book all the UK cohort in Memphis were talking about. I
believe it will be bigger than H is for Hawk. It’s the ultimate
hand-sell title where even your customers become booksellers
themselves, recommending the book to complete strangers in
the queue at the book till. Whatever Will Self may believe, this
is the bookshop’s version of a water-cooler moment. ■
Rosamund de la Hey is president of the Booksellers Association, and
owner and founder of the Mainstreet Trading Company.
 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018 LONDON SHOW DAILY

Pop Up Creators storytelling exhibition

To coincide with the
London Book Fair’s
Baltic Countries
Market Focus, Pop
Up, a not-for-profit
social enterprise, is
to hold an
exhibition of 150
“ambitious” graphic
stories by young
illustrators, writes
Julie Vuong. The The 150 stories will be in leporello format, or concertina style
work was gathered
from an exchange between the UK, Estonia, Latvia and is a new digital product called Pathways. It’s in its early
Lithuania to strengthen the UK’s ties with Europe conceptual stages, but we will have something substantial
following the country’s vote to leave the EU, according to to launch at a reception, co-hosted by our Estonian,
founder Dylan Calder. “Pop Up Creators was birthed by Latvian and Lithuanian partners, at ROSL on 9th April.
Brexit,” he says. “The project ran from March to August Because we want to play a role in nurturing a select
2017, featuring 18 illustrators/artists, including William group of some of the very best artists beyond this project,
Grill, Alexis Deacon and Emily Hughes, who mentored we’re evolving this digital-agency-hybrid, co-developed
talented young visual arts students (age 16-24) in 16 with a wonderful Birmingham-based illustration agency
universities and colleges. called Inkygoodness.” ■
“It has never been more important for arts organisations For more information, go to www.pop-up.org.uk
to connect with like-minded European organisations and
artists. Once the UK leaves the EU, we will be losing
access not just to funding for arts, culture, heritage,
regeneration, but also to openness, opportunities to
converse, co-create, disseminate.”
Calder cited lack of diversity in children’s publishing as
another key factor behind the staging of the exhibition.
“Ethnic diversity among published children’s authors in this
country is shockingly low,” he says. “Particularly when you
look at the field of illustration — you’d be hard pressed to
name even 10 recently published BAME picture book
illustrators in the UK market. That’s astonishing in a society
where 13% (2011 census) of the population are BAME (and
it’s much higher in our cities), and this is only rising.”
The 150 stories in leporello format, or concertina style,
plus a selection of reproduced artwork, will be exhibited at
the Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) — co-produced with
House of Illustration — from 9th April to 20th May. The
exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events at LBF.
“Writer and publisher Bhavit Mehta is running a
seminar, ‘Pushing the Limits of Graphic Stories: Spotlight
on the Pop Up Creators Project’, at 10am tomorrow (11th
April) in the Children’s Hub,” Calder continued. “The
panel includes artists, mentors, tutors and publishers from
across the project, discussing their experience of the
process, as well as how the innovative and eccentric styles
of these young artists push the limits of the genre.”
Beyond LBF, Pop Up Creators will continue its work
through a new online platform. Calder said: “Possibly the
most exciting legacy of this project, made possible with a
small amount of seed funding from Arts Council England,

23
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Three very different countries
Harriet Williams finds out more about this year’s Market Focus, the Baltic Countries
The Baltic countries of
Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania share many things,
not least momentous
20th-century history, but
their cultures, publishing
sectors and writers are very
distinct. One of the aims of
the Market Focus cultural
programme curated by the
British Council is to highlight Estonian Children’s Literature Centre
those differences.
Estonia
Estonia balances digital-forward thinking with a love for folklore
and the natural world. They also have one of the highest literacy
rates in the world, at 99.8%. The four writers in their Market
Focus delegation represent some of the best writing from Estonia,
and range in genre across fiction, poetry, philosophy and memoir.
Their Author of the Day Mihkel Mutt is known for his playful,
witty books, and his acerbic commentary on Europe and Estonia’s
transition from the Soviet era. Rein Raud is Estonian literary
aristocracy, coming from a family of distinguished writers, and his
varied career includes success in academia as well as eight novels
and several collections of short stories and poetry. Maarja Kangro
is a poet, short story writer and librettist whose work is permeated
by a melancholy humour. Finally Andrei Ivanov is one of the
Russian speaking community in Estonia and writes in Russian, but
he is clear that Estonia is his home country and point of departure
for his books like Hanuman’s Journey to Lolland (translated by
Matthew Hyde, Vagabond Voices) where he explores in fiction his
own experiences in a refugee camp.
Latvia
The theme of Latvia’s stand is their “I am introvert” campaign, in
which they proudly claim their writers are introverts. It is perhaps
not unconnected that they have a vibrant poetry publishing sector,
and one of their most important festivals is Poetry Days in
September. Latvia’s biggest literary event in recent years has been
the commissioning of several different high profile novelists to
write a novel based on a specific period of 20th-century Latvian
history. Each book in the series, published by Dienas Grāmata, has
been a bestseller in Latvia. Nora Ikstena’s novel in this series, Mātes
piens, has been published as Soviet Milk in the UK by Peirene Press
(translated by Margita Gailitis), and she is Latvia’s Author of the
Day. Inga Ābele depicts “otherness” in her novels, short stories and
plays, whether it be eccentric rural societies or minority groups.
The prize-winning poet Kārlis Vērdiņš writes for children and
adults, revealing uncomfortable truths in a playful way. Finally
Luīze Pastore (Firefly Press) is the only children’s writer in the
cultural programme. Her latest work aims to introduce children to
art through a series of adventurous detective stories.
24
TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
Latvian National Library Lithuanian Folklore Institute
Lithuania
Lithuania too is a nation of poets, and home to the largest
book fair in the Baltics, in Vilnius in February. Lithuania’s
Author of the Day is the most widely read Lithuanian
novelist Kristina Sabaliauskaitė — an art historian and
former foreign correspondent now based in London.
Tomas Venclova is a world-renowned poet and literary
critic whose poems unite various realms of time and space.
Undinė Radzevičiūtė won the European Union Prize for
Literature in 2015 for her novel Fishes and Dragons about
the clash of Chinese civilisation and the Christian world of
the West. Alvydas Šlepikas (Oneworld) is another multi-
talented writer, moving between literature, theatre, film and
television as a writer, playwright, screenwriter and actor.
But as well as illustrating their differences, the Market Focus
cultural programme is an opportunity to bring writers from the
Baltic countries together on a single platform. There will be a
discussion of Baltic poetry today at 1pm in the International
Markets Theatre, reflecting on the importance of poetry in the
region. On Wednesday at 10am there is a review of children’s
literature from the Baltics at the Children’s Hub. Wednesday
is also the day when all three Authors of the Day appear at the
English PEN literary salon. On Thursday, Forward prize winner
Vahni Capildeo joins us to discuss writing about place at 10am,
also at the International Theatre, alongside Kristina Sabliauskaitė
and Inga Ābele. We’re closing out LBF week with a discussion
on writing through children’s eyes at 2pm on Thursday with
Claire Armitstead. As well as the events in Olympia there is a
programme of public events as part of London Book & Screen
Week, and in Glasgow and Birmingham.
LBF is the centre point of the Baltics Market Focus programme,
but the cultural programme continues through the year. This year
is also the centenary anniversary of the independence of Estonia
and Latvia, and the renewed independence of Lithuania, and there
is a year-long programme of cultural events in celebration. It is a
unique opportunity to understand and appreciate the distinct
character of each of these remarkable countries. ■
Harriet Williams is literature programme manager, Arts Group, British Council.
November 11-18, 2018
MIAMI, FLORIDA
MIAMIBOOKFAIR.COM
/miamibookfair #MiamiBookFair2018

POETRY, FICTION & NONFICTION FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

STREET FAIR / PUBLISHERS & BOOKSELLERS / CHILDREN’S AUTHORS & ACTIVITIES
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Authors Alliance: status update
Andrew Richard Albanese caught up with
Brianna Schofield, executive director of the
Authors Alliance since November of 2016,
to see how the organisation is growing.
AA: The Authors Alliance was launched in
2014 essentially in response to the Authors
Guild lawsuits against Google, and many have
since taken that to mean you are a counter to
the Authors Guild. Is that a fair assessment?
BS: In fact, we share many core objectives
with the Authors Guild. Both organisations Brianna Schofield
support authors by providing resources to help
them understand and manage their rights, which are all the
more necessary as digital networks continue to provide
authors with increased options for creating and distributing
their works. But our policy efforts do reflect that many of our
members’ interests are not just financial. For example, one of
the key differences between the Authors Alliance and the
Authors Guild is our stance on fair use. In a number of recent
cases, including the Authors Guild vs. Google Books case and
Cambridge University Press vs. Albert (the Georgia State
e-reserves case), we supported an interpretation of fair use that
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26
TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
we believe helps authors get their works in
front of new audiences.
AA: Give us a status update — four years
later, how is the organisation faring?
BS: Our membership, resources and staff have
grown steadily since our founding. We now
represent more than 1,500 members and
growing. And we have released three major
guides: a guide to getting rights back, a guide
to open access and a guide to fair use for non-
fiction authors. We are currently developing
our fourth guide, a guide to publication
contracts, which we hope to release this fall. All of our guides
are freely available on our website (www.authorsalliance.org).
In addition, we’ve established a solid presence in the copyright
policy debates, giving voice to authors whose interests have long
been absent in these conversations through activities such as public
comments to the Copyright Office, participation in rulemakings
and as amicus curiae in litigation. Though our current resources
are developed and vetted with US law and practices in mind,
international members are welcome to join, and we currently have
members from Canada, the UK, Australia and beyond.
AA: Self-publishing has grown by leaps and bounds in recent
years, but the terms on many self-publishing platforms can be
difficult to parse and often are non-negotiable. Will this be an
area of focus for you?
BS: Technology has opened up many opportunities for authors
who might not attract the attention of traditional publishers, or
who just want more control of their works. But self-publication
does come without the services and support for authors that a
traditional publisher can offer — and yes, one of the related issues
is that some self-publishing terms are non-negotiable. While we
have not yet created resources focused on self-publishing, our
materials, such as the forthcoming guide to contracts, will certainly
help authors understand their options, including self-publishing.
AA: What issues are on the front burner for you right now?
BS: On the educational side, we recently released a new guide,
Fair Use for Nonfiction Authors, to help authors make confident
fair-use decisions when incorporating source materials into their
writings. And as I mentioned, the much-requested guide to
publication contracts will be out this fall. On the policy side, we
have been actively involved with the US Copyright Office,
advocating on a range of issues, for example: a rule that would
help authors make fair use of DVD and Blu-Ray video clips in
their ebooks; to consider formally recognising the authors’ right
to integrity and attribution; and other non-economic author
rights, such as the right to revive one’s work if it is no longer
available commercially. And, on the international stage, we will
be participating in conversations at the World Intellectual
Property Organization (WIPO) this year, as well as exploring a
host of new partnerships. ■
 TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018 LONDON SHOW DAILY

Success with adaptive learning

Digital is transforming the learning process. That was Teuvo
Sankila’s take-away message at the What Works? Education
Conference at LBF last year, writes Conor O’Sullivan. As
publishing director at Otava Publishing of Finland, he explained
how “better learning” is now the measurable goal for educational
publishers. And how digital exercises, which involve real time
feedback and personalised guidance, are the most promising
manifestations of this, supporting focused effort for students and
integrating with the teacher’s supporting and guiding role.
Across almost all countries in Europe, educational publishers
are starting to see the tangible improvements in learning facilitated
by personalised digital workbooks. The products appear simple,
usually relate directly to existing print product, but hide powerful
adaptive learning technologies under the hood.
One early example was the Smart Öving product in Norway by
Gyldendal, where the narrow focus on Smart Exercises proved a
good practical and commercial judgement of how technology can
integrate with teaching. In Ireland, the successful BuildUp product
by Folens Publishers acts both as a guided homework tool and a
classroom exercising product. It boasts very strong learning gain
numbers, with average grade improvements of 15-20%.
One very interesting example we have worked on is with Aula
Planeta in Spain, where the focused practise of the “Matic”
personalised digital workbook complements an innovative
project-based learning (PBL) pedagogy. A vision of 21st-century
skills that values teachers and the social dynamic of the classroom
in tandem with effective, focused individual learning.
Sankila’s insights are well founded. Within the next five
years, personalised digital workbooks look set to replace a
large share of the print-workbook market — worth an
estimated €530m per year in Europe alone.
but also metrics on engagement, confusion and difficulty, each
segmented by various learner types. This gives vital information
to the authoring and editorial teams on content updates.
Learning design is now structured on a data-rich learning
framework, or curriculum map, that allows authors and
editors to understand the different learning paths of students
through the curriculum. Not only does the learning process
become more visible to the content author, but again data on
learning patterns is gathered, and products can now focus on
how to address key patterns of misconception and learning
struggles on a more informed basis. All this leads to better
classroom experiences for teachers and learners.
Finally, at a commercial level, publishing sales teams teams
need, and thrive, on a deep understanding of their customers.
More detailed customer segmentation, informed messaging
and targeted campaign organisation are leading to marked
increases in sales team effectiveness.
As educational publishers take on the challenge of “better
learning”, a more profound transformation to “better
publishing” is steadily underway throughout our industry. ■
Conor O’Sullivan is co-founder and CEO of Adaptemy.
He will be speaking at the LBF What Works? Education Conference today.

Walk before you run

One big word of caution. Some more ambitious adaptive learning
programmes have struggled to gain any commercial traction. Several
well-known publishers in Europe and the US have invested heavily
in developing comprehensive adaptive learning programmes, with
large amounts of alternative content recommended as learning
interventions to every type of student. Forcing excessive change on
the learning process can be too disruptive for teachers, is usually
plagued with misunderstandings of real-world situations, and is
the quickest way to alienate your market. Change is definitely
coming, but Rome wasn’t built in a day!
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personalised and adaptive learning experiences for the students Puzzles and the People Effective Partnerships
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HOWARD W. BUFFETT
publishers. Smart publishers are now using high-quality learning DONALD R. PROTHERO and WILLIAM B. EIMICKE
data to reliably improve content development, learning design,
product commissioning, “customer onboarding” and sales. C U P.CO LU MB I A . E DU
Let’s start with content, the prize asset of the publisher. In digital Customers in United Kingdom, Europe, Africa, the Middle East,
learning solutions, the performance of every element of content is South Asia, and South Africa, please contact our UK distributor,
WILEY, via email: customer@wiley.com
measurable. What can you measure? Not just learning impact,

27
 LONDON SHOW DAILY
Our ideas, our stories, our future
Since the very earliest days of printing technology, British
writers and their publishers have been working together to
entertain, challenge, inform and educate people of all ages
and nationalities, writes William Bowes. The stories and
discoveries we have shared have projected Britain’s people,
landscape, values and culture into hearts and homes all
around the globe.
As we stand at this moment of national change and
renewal, the UK publishing community is keen that
the government fully understands why British
publishing has been so successful and why that
matters to the health and wealth of our nation.
Today, the Publishers Association
is launching our blueprint for the
industry, focused on our key asks
of government. As we look
towards the future,
it’s worth stepping back and
considering why writing and
publishing matter so much to
our country.
Why writing matters to Britain
From William Shakespeare to Robert Burns, Ian Fleming to
JK Rowling, and Charles Darwin to Stephen Hawking,
British writers are renowned the world over. But so are our
publishers. Britain is home to: the world’s oldest and most
prestigious presses, in Cambridge and Oxford; Allen Lane’s
20th-century innovation of the Penguin paperback; the
quality literary fiction of Faber & Faber; and the ground-
breaking discoveries published in journals such as The
Lancet and Nature.
Our publications and brands stand as a beacon of
quality, authenticity, editorial and political independence,
accuracy and respect. Put simply, in a world awash with
content and information, readers the world over know that
British publishers publish things that are worth reading.
Stories help places make sense. They make us feel we
have been somewhere even when we haven’t. Feel we know
people we have never met. And believe in things we have
never had the fortune to experience. They shape our hopes
and our dreams.
Educates and informs
But great writing is not only a creative tool. It is also
essential in enabling the global academic, teaching and
professional communities to work and communicate better
by reviewing and sharing information that they need. In
doing so it educates and informs. It changes lives. Saves
lives. Makes lives. Prevents disaster. Creates opportunity.
Provides insight. Enables research. Builds businesses.
Enables innovation. Manages risk. Gives teachers tools and
saves them time. And above all, creates a shared
community and shared experience.
28
TUESDAY 10 APRIL 2018
Why publishing matters to Britain
But for these benefits to accrue, stories and information
must not only be written, but must be found and shared.
And this is where publishing comes in.
To understand the importance of publishing to our society
and economy, imagine for a moment a Britain that no longer
has a world leading publishing industry. Where rather than
export our language, writers, values and content for others to
use and adapt, instead we predominantly rely on imports and
translate works from others. Think of the next James Bond or
Harry Potter that is undiscovered or unpublished. The medical
breakthrough in a British university languishing in a blog
because the researcher cannot get
published by a foreign publisher
they do not know and who does
not know them. And think of a
country where because we do not
have a thriving, independent and
editorially free publishing sector, we
end up with an increasing amount
of public sector provision of content
and textbooks or of low quality advertiser-funded books.
Think also of the community we want to live in.
Publishing is a showcase for humanity, good and bad.
Having the world’s best publishers based here, doing all of
this in our own communities and with our own perspective
is transformational and enabling for life in this country in
ways we often take for granted.
Contribution to the economy
And, yes, think also of our economy. We are a major
industry in our own right, paying taxes, directly employing
29,000 people and with a leading export sector (both to the
EU and well beyond) and strong productivity. But there is
also the value we add to universities, film and theatre. And
the financial, banking and professional services sector on
which the UK economy relies is fuelled by data, research,
insight and information that British publishers collect,
improve and disseminate.
In short, Britain’s publishing sector puts the information
into society, the knowledge into the economy and the culture
into community. We translate Britain to the rest of the world,
provide waypoints for those from other nations to find the
common ground between us and them. And in this world of
shorter and narrower horizons, we provide imperishable
goods that travel anywhere and last in perpetuity.
Today, as we launch our blueprint for UK publishing, we
set out some of the things we need for our success story to
continue. This matters not just to publishers, authors and
the communities we serve. It also matters to Britain’s
economy, society and influence around the world.  ■
William Bowes is director of policy and general counsel at the Publishers
Association, which is holding the seminar, A Bookish Brexit, today,
from11.30am to 12.30pm in the Olympia Room, Grand Hall.
 London rights marketplace
PW’s New Title Showcase
This section was created to give publishers the
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For more information regarding this low-cost
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Forbidden Child
A Tale of the ‘70s
Sylvie Chartrand
Sylvie Chartrand
ISBN 978-2-9701077-1-2
Montreal 1973. A small-time grass
dealer, a wide-eyed teenager, a guru
full of surprises, a talented stripper,
an ungifted pagan, and a moose.
Geneviève falls for Jude, an ambitious
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Jude’s turbulent world will soon
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Sylvie Chartrand
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sylvie_chartrand@bluewin.ch
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Buzzy and Thomas
Vicki Tashman
Historical Tails
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50 years of Heavy Metal
George Anagnostopoulos
Diavlos Publications
ISBN 978-960-531-410-1
This book (4/color illustrated) deals
with 50 important subjects (equal to
the age of heavy metal) that marked
this music genre and consequently,
civilization and society. The original
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consequently digitally processed.
info@diavlosbooks.gr
diavlosbooks.com
The Art of War for
Football
Christos Charalampopoulos
Diavlos Publications
ISBN 978-960-531-409-5
Author-journalist in Brussels,
Strasbourg and Athens uses examples
and case studies from all around
the world, presenting similarities of
football with two levels of war, both
inside and outside the pitch. Includes
strategies and tactics, the economics,
the strong and weak features of the
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teams, etc.
info@diavlosbooks.gr
diavlosbooks.com
City of Shards
A Story of Redemption
Steve Rodgers
JKS Communications
ISBN 978-0-9983616-0-4
In the Wormpile district, Larin must
battle his own demons and real ones
to save the city he loves--and along
with it, the soul of humanity. An epic
fantasy tale of strange beasts, strange
gods, and the battle within.
— Sure to be the next best novel in
All rights reserved
fantasy! (Amazon review)
info@steverodgersauthor.com
amazon.com/City-Shards-Spellgiver-Steve-Rodgers/dp/0998361615
SLIPPER
Hester Velmans
van Horton Books
ISBN 978-0-9994756-0-7
Meet the model for the world’s
most famous fairytale through the
prism of the real-life author, Charles
Perrault. Combines the style of the
18th-century novel with the pace of a
modern feminist romance, featuring
a headstrong heroine who encounters
adversity at every turn on the way to
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 NEW YORK
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 LONDON BOOK FAIR 2018

The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT

An in-depth look at everything digital at the fair
APRIL 2018

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APRIL 2018 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Your Attention, Please
Print books and e-books may have found balance in recent years,
but the digital future is more complex than ever
BY ANDREW RICHARD ALBANESE

I 
n remarks at the 2017 Frankfurt Book Fair, Penguin
Random House CEO Markus Dohle declared an end to
those anxious days of digital disintermediation. “We have
achieved a healthy coexistence between print and digital
books,” he observed.
“Who would have imagined that in 2017 we would see an
80/20 split among those formats globally?” Dohle contin-
ued. “You might say that many so-called experts predicted
the split five years ago—but the split those
experts were predicting was that 80% of
all books sold today would be digital.
Many were even predicting the death of
print books. Yet today’s reality shows that
the relationship is exactly the opposite.”
Rather Dohle said, a decade after the
Kindle, print books have experienced a
“veritable renaissance.” And that renais-
sance, he added, has been “a stabilizing
factor for... the entire book ecosystem.”
But as the publishing world gathers for
this year’s London Book Fair, the broader
digital future doesn’t exactly feel stable.
Yes, print sales have rebounded some-
what. But the digital landscape now fac- At the Public Library
ing the book business is as complex and Association Conference last month, decade ago, after the launch of the Kindle,
perhaps more unpredictable than ever— author Tim Wu said net neutrality
from copyright and legal issues, to was key to the future of free speech. traditional publishers’ digital fortunes
self-publishing, open access, and policy battles over privacy,
data collection, fake news, the potential regulation of social
media, and new, insidious forms of censorship.
Those days when publishers worried about their print
sales, or Google digitizing all those old library books? Those
were the good old days.
Shifting Winds
Of course, Dohle is right. Over the past few years, the print/
digital balance for traditional publishers has found equilib-
rium.
“It’s really striking that the print book numbers have not
only held up but are substantially higher than the e-book
numbers,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technol-
ogy research at Pew Research, which has been surveying
American reading habits dating back to 2011. “When we
started doing our research, the hypothesis we were testing
was whether e-books would eventually overtake print books.
The data shows that’s not happening any time soon.”
Overall, Pew research also shows that readers are consum-
ing books on a multitude of platforms—only 7% of Pew
respondents identify as e-book–only readers, while 37% said
they read print only. And Rainie is quick to point to strong
growth in audiobooks—a particular focus of this year’s
Quantum Conference at the London Book Fair.
A number of factors have helped boost
audio sales for publishers, such as the
popularity of podcasts, and the advent of
easy downloads and streaming services.
Pew says its latest research shows that
one in five Americans has consumed an
audiobook in the last year, a “statistically
significant” jump over previous surveys,
and a number that tracks with reports of
surging audiobook sales from publishers.
No one should be surprised that audio-
book sales would grow as the market
moved to a more efficient model, down-
loads and streaming, and away from
physical CDs. But when the digital con-
versation started really heating up a
it’s likely no one would have predicted
would rest on audio. That now appears to be the case. Take
Simon & Schuster, for example: despite a decline in e-book
sales, its 2017 digital revenues were up 3.6% over 2016,
thanks largely to a 39% jump in downloadable audio.
The rise of audiobooks tells us one thing for certain: the
digital world changes fast, and often not in ways we expect.
On that note, publishers in London will be watching some of
the broader digital trends now emerging with interest. The
digital conversation today is no longer about e-books vs.
print books. And if the digital world appears to have stabi-
lized for publishers over the last few years, recent develop-
ments threaten to shake it like a snow globe.
Who Do You Trust?
As this year’s London Book fair opens, the challenges now
emerging in the digital realm go well beyond format. Take
for example the revelations that the firm Cambridge Analyt-

3
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
ica had stolen and abused significant amounts of Facebook
data. Over the past decade, publishers have grown signifi-
cantly more sophisticated in their social media marketing
and their use of data. But social media marketing is always a
moving target, of course, as a change in Facebook’s algo-
rithm recently demonstrated. But now, with calls for more
regulation of social media, more accountability, and more
protections of people’s private data, the marketing and data
practices of today could change in the coming months.
University of Virginia media studies professor Siva Vaid-
hyanathan, author of the forthcoming book Antisocial
Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines
Democracy (Oxford Univ.), says that regulation of firms like
Facebook is long past due. But he warns of a difficult slog
ahead.
“We should have been considering ways of reining in the
power of these companies before they became more valuable
than General Electric,” Vaidhyanathan says. “Before they
became more powerful than many governments. And before
they became more influential than the BBC. We made a terri-
ble mistake by thinking of these companies as cute
experiments, or an interesting phenomenon, or
great investments, and didn’t necessarily think
through the larger implications of what would hap-
pen if they actually got as big and as wealthy as we
hoped they would. And I think we now have a real
emergency.”
In May, the European Union will seek to address
some of these issues with the rollout of the General
Data Protection Regulation, which Vaidhyanathan notes will
change the way digital companies like Facebook, Google, and
even Amazon operate in Europe. And such regulations, he
thinks, will likely follow in other territories, including the
U.S. But don’t expect things to go smoothly.
“It would be great if we could jump in and regulate these
companies just enough to maximize the good stuff and min-
imize the bad stuff,” Vaidhyanathan says. “Unfortunately,
that’s going to be hard, and I think we’re going to lose more
than we win for a while.”
The Internet at Risk
In addition to social media concerns, there is also an array of
alarming threats to online speech cropping up around the
globe, including censorship concerns. And while publishers
in the U.S. don’t yet seem to be overly concerned by attempts
to alter the way the internet works (for example, the recent
repeal of net neutrality protections in the U.S.) they should
be, observers say, noting that the free flow of ideas is a bed-
rock publishing value.
Net neutrality is the set of principles that keeps internet
service providers from blocking, discriminating against, or
throttling content over their networks. In December 2017,
the FCC under the Trump administration voted to repeal net
neutrality rules, which had been in practice for more than a
4 www.publishersweekly.com
APRIL 2018
decade, but were only formally adopted in 2015.
In a keynote at the Public Library Association conference
in Philadelphia last month, Columbia University law pro-
fessor Tim Wu, author of The Master Switch: The Rise and
Fall of Information Empires and The Attention Merchants:
The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads told librarians
that net neutrality and other policies that “guarantee a
baseline for the free flow of information” are “as import-
ant, if not more important, than the First Amendment” in
the digital age.
“It’s not surprising that the Russian government doesn’t
respect net neutrality, that the Chinese government doesn’t
respect net neutrality, that the most oppressive regimes are
all opponents of net neutrality,” Wu said. “There is a pattern,
and it is sad that the U.S. has joined those ranks.”
In addition, the U.S. has also just passed a law that scales
back “safe harbor” protections for websites and network
providers in what critics are calling a well-intentioned but
misguided attempt to fight sex trafficking. Specifically, the
Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act
scales back safe harbor protections for websites or
networks where users are found to be facilitating
prostitution. But threatening online networks
with ruinous liability for the actions of some of
their users will instead force them to police and in
some cases censor their users, and sets a chilling
precedent for free speech online.
Such internet-centric developments may not
seem like immediate threats to book publishers,
but observers say, they pose significant risks. “As historic
defenders of free speech, publishers must stay engaged with
what’s happening,” writes UC Davis librarian and PW con-
tributing editor Peter Brantley, in an editorial in this issue.
“What we want the internet to become—just how raucous a
debate we want it to support—is a discussion that will not
only set the boundaries of the internet, but of the greater
guarantee of free speech.”
And of course, there are the questions publishers are used
to grappling with, such as the ongoing global debate over
copyright and intellectual property policy. After a decade of
litigation and legislative efforts, copyright in 2018 remains
as complex as ever, varying from region to region, from court
to court, increasingly debated as part of global trade agree-
ments, and negotiated through various licensing regimes.
And perhaps the biggest digital wild card of all still looms,
notes Copyright Clearance Center CEO Tracey Armstrong:
the millennials. “By 2025, it’s predicted that we’ll have 92
million millennials in the workforce in the information space,”
she says. “So we’ve got a lot of change coming.”
These subjects and more will be up for discussion in Lon-
don, both within the fair’s professional program, and in the
aisles of Olympia. Along with a bustling rights trade, the
London Book Fair as always offers a vital opportunity for
publishers from around the globe to exchange ideas. ■
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT APRIL 2018

The
Millennial
Moment
PW talks with Copyright
Clearance Center
CEO Tracey Armstrong

BY ANDREW RICHARD ALBANESE

W
hen it comes to copyright and intellectual
property policy, it’s enough to give you whip-
lash. On the tech and business side, change
comes almost too fast. But on the legal and
legislative side, change can be maddeningly
slow. We caught up with Copyright Clearance Center CEO
Tracey Armstrong ahead of this year’s London Book Fair to
talk about the ever-complex copyright and IP landscape.
A decade ago, there was a sense of uncertainty, even fear,
among some publishers at the London Book Fair over what
the digital age would bring. Where do you think we are now?
Do you think that fear has pretty much subsided?
I would say yes. Part of the reason why is that we have so
much happening in the market right now in terms of data,
machine learning, and artificial intelligence. If you asked
CEOs what they are focused on today, I think they’d point to
three things. Number one, they’re focused on data. Data is
what is going to fuel the machine learning and AI hype, if it
is to live up to the hype.
Number two is the power of the individual in the market
today. I think we’re going to hear more and more talk about
data signals, getting closer to the customer, understanding
user behavior, and trying to meet the expectations of people
who are now consuming information in bite-size chunks,
which of course offers new and different ways for authors to
bring their works to market, and different ways for readers
to connect with authors.
Three, we have to talk about the rise of the millennials.
We’ve seen the power of millennials in the U.S., for example,
with these kids standing up and organizing for their right to
feel safe in their classrooms. I think we’re looking at a really
different generation. By 2025, it’s predicted that we’ll have
Tracey Armstrong
92 million millennials in the workforce in the information
space. So we’ve got a lot of change coming.
That’s an excellent point. What’s your sense of the kind of
change you see millennials bringing?
Well, a decade ago we were talking about snippets. Today it’s
tweets. My point is, the information game has really changed.
And these millennials, they will be knowledge workers; they
will be researchers, marketing professionals, authors, aca-
demics; they will work at Publishers Weekly—and it’s clear
they take a very different view of the world.
On Wednesday, you’ll be speaking at the Research & Schol-
arly Publishing Forum, along with Copyright Hub’s Caroline
Boyd, about rights and global licensing issues. Ahead of that
talk, I want to ask you very generally whether you think
copyright laws, or even the norms underpinning various IP
laws, are falling out of step with the the digital marketplace?
Well, I do think norms are changing, and typically legislation
trails well behind user behavior. But looking at some of the
major trends, I think trade agreements can and actually
already are impacting intellectual property laws. And while
copyright may not be able to keep up legislatively with the

6 www.publishersweekly.com
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
changes in the market, licensing continues to grow in impor-
tance. And there are lots of business models around licensing
that are more agile and can more rapidly adapt to new
norms. Take, for example, YouTube, which wants to use col-
lective licensing to keep both the studios and their users
happy on its platform.
At last year’s London Book Fair, U.S. judge Pierre Leval, who
basically wrote the book on U.S. fair use and wrote the
majority opinion in the Google Books case, argued that fair
use is not the enemy. On the same stage, Jon Baumgarten
argued that U.S. courts have stretched the idea of what’s
“transformative” beyond recognition. What’s your take on
fair use—do you think fair use has been expanded too far?
Yes, I do. In the case of what the courts consider to be trans-
formative, the norms of the past have been blown apart. And
I don’t know if the pendulum will swing back on that, or if
we’re just too far out of the barn.
I think the courts today are increasingly looking at and
trying to assess whether outcomes are benefiting society. For
example, in the Google Books case, the appeals court found
that the outcome was generally positive. In contrast, in the
TVEyes case, which was decided recently, the same court
limited the definition of transformative use. But those deter-
minations involve a lot of interpretation, and I guess I would
say there’s now too much room for abuse of fair use.
And looking globally, we now have other countries that
are jumping on the fair use bandwagon, which is something
to watch, because fair use is not an elixir. In fact, in countries
with different legal models, fair use does not always fit well.
A trend we see overall in copyright, at the governmental and
intergovernmental levels, is more and more calls for excep-
tions. I think that’s because crafting or enforcing copyright
legislation is hard. Exceptions are easier. But that doesn’t
mean they are right.
Editor’s note: TVEyes offers a for-profit subscription service
that monitors TV and radio broadcasts. The service continu-
ously records content from more than 1,400 sources, then
creates and offers clients a text-searchable database from
which they can access audiovisual clips up to 10 minutes in
8 www.publishersweekly.com
APRIL 2018
length containing relevant search terms. In 2013, Fox News
sued TVEyes. Citing the Google Books case, TVEyes argued
that its service was protected by fair use. But on Feb. 27,
2018, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that
TVEyes was unlawfully profiting by commercially redistrib-
uting copyrighted content without payment or license. The
case is Fox News Network LLC v. TVEyes.
For years now we’ve been hearing about copyright reform, or
updating U.S. copyright laws, without anything happening.
Given where we are politically, do you think some kind of
broad effort to update copyright laws for the digital age can
still happen?
Is it time to update our copyright laws? Yes. I would defi-
nitely support an update. At the same time, there’s a little bit
of “be careful what you wish for” here too. And there’s still
a lot of room in licensing for agile, fit-for-purpose market
solutions.
For example, I believe legislation can help us in areas such
as orphan works. That’s a problem we really should have
fixed in the United States. And we should not be afraid of
other licensing models, such as extended collective licenses.
A deeper look at licensing, combined with legislative solu-
tions to solve some of our thorniest problems, could be a
meaningful approach. ■
A COPYRIGHT
CONVERSATION
ON THE EVOLVING
ROLE OF RIGHTS
AND LICENSING
IN PUBLISHING
Wednesday, April 11, 11:30 a.m. to noon,
at the Research & Scholarly
Publishing Forum
Hear more from Tracey Armstrong, in conversation
with Copyright Hub’s Caroline Boyd, as these two
leading figures from the world of copyright discuss the
issues and challenges arising as publishers evolve into
technology companies and, likewise, tech companies
begin to emerge as publishers.
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cation of its pre-editing, copyediting, production, and con- some of the 2.0 upgrades: “The big differentiators with Smart
tent delivery tools since day one. Suite 2.0 involve issues that Cenveo has encountered in 130-
The Cenveo Publisher Suite, for instance, has benefited from plus years of working with all publisher types. For example,
the AI/NLP combo. “It has just gotten smarter,” says Waseem the publisher-specific rule configurations can be set for each
Andrabi, v-p of content services for Cenveo. “Cloud-based individual product type, or for the publisher, or divided into
Smart Suite 2.0 is the next-generation publishing engine that groups so that rules are organized efficiently. If a publisher has
focuses on a combination of AI and system intelligence. It three categories of products, then rules can be created in three
autogenerates multiple outputs—including PDF, XML, groups rather than per title—which is a powerful and effi-
HTML, ePub, and Mobi—from manuscripts in record-set- cient way to ensure consistent editorial quality.”
ting time.” For the new version, the user interface has been Then there are the metadata management functions. Calil-
redesigned and integrated with a high-speed production hanna says, “If metadata is missing in the document but avail-
engine, solving many of the challenges able in the meta-XML file, Smart Suite inserts that
related to multichannel publishing. metadata where necessary into the XML. The sys-
According to Andrabi, the unified tool set tem provides real-time validation and update of
“comprises four distinct modules that content with concurrent metadata.”
work together to seamlessly advance con- And if a metadata mismatch occurs, the sys-
tent through publishing workflows while tem will flag it for editorial review. Calilhanna
validating and maintaining markup lan- notes, “Human intervention is only required for
guage behind the scenes. Smart Suite is con- exceptions rather than the default, which enables
figured based on publisher- or content-spe- efficient content flow through the processes.”
cific requirements, and the system easily According to Andrabi, “With the applica-
integrates with custom taxonomic dictio- tion of advanced AI, Smart Edit can intelli-
naries and industry taxonomies such as the Cenveo’s Waseem Andrabi (l.), gently identify various parts of a manuscript
Crossref Funder Registry, GenBank, and Marianne Calilhanna, and Atul using data mining. Among the 20 major refer-
ORCID.” Goel at the New England Pub- ence types that can be auto-identified are first
Smart Edit, one of the four Publisher Suite lishing Collaboration Awards and last names, geographic locations,
modules, is a pre-editing, copyediting, and ceremony, where Cenveo won addresses, and email addresses.”
conversion tool that incorporates AI and the Audience Choice Award. Smart Edit can also apply advanced data
NLP to benefit publishers, not only regarding editorial quality, processing techniques to extract specific information from
but also in terms of better and faster markup and delivery to large or multisource data sets. Calilhanna says “This is useful
output channels. The fully automated production engine for publishers who want to engage with deep analysis of
Smart Compose then ingests structured output from Smart their content. Smart Edit can use precisely targeted queries
Edit and generates print and digital deliverables. Smart Com- with unstructured and semistructured data.” ■
pose is designed to work with both 3B2 and InDesign, and its
built-in styles based on publisher specifications guarantee con- For more information and a demo of Smart Suite 2.0, visit
sistent, high-quality layouts. booth 3E08 in the Technology Zone, or check out cenveo-
The online proofing tool Smart Proof provides a brows- publisherservices.com.
er-based interface to make edits, answer queries, and allow for
Pages 10–14 are published with the support of the
valid XML round tripping. The last module, Smart Track, is an
publishers covered in these articles.
online workflow management, tracking, and reporting system

10 www.publishersweekly.com
APRIL 2018 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Klopotek Goes 360-Degrees on Stream
A visually pleasing user experience makes publishing tasks easier
BY TERI TAN

T
he web-based Klopotek Stream platform, which supports the entire
print/digital publishing value chain, has matured and extended to
become the 360° brand. Key Stream web apps—Product 360° (which is
now live at Taylor & Francis Group), Contact 360°, Contract 360°,
and Author 360°—provide complete views of information in key pub-
lishing areas that users deal with every day.
According to Nella Klopotek, executive v-p of UX design and UI develop-
ment at Klopotek, as well as head of marketing there, “Stream is all about the
user, and it is our belief that modern software should not be something that you
feel you must switch on first and then strictly follow a collection of rules you
often do not understand. The software should be a visually pleasing smart guide
to help you through your tasks. It must be friendly, flexible, and of course, very
powerful.”
Throughout the development of Stream, the team has stayed very close to the
customers in order to tailor the applications to their individual needs. Klopotek
says, “This starts with the UI prototype and related workshop phase in which
visual requirements engineering is a core component. The visual elements are
put into focus, as ‘what you see’ is a very clear and powerful language to ensure
Nella Klopotek
that everybody—end users, developers, technology specialists, managers, and

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11
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
decision makers, for instance—understands the require-
ments and processes.”
For the Klopotek team, making key information available
in a 360-degree view saves time and thus helps reduce costs.
The Stream apps enable users to directly make decisions and
act based on the clear (and unique) views of the data and
analyses being displayed. At the same time, by providing true
and customizable workflow support, Stream apps guide
users through all steps for completing essential tasks, thereby
helping to harmonize processes and make them more trans-
parent.
“If a customer contacts us, we immedi-
ately have a complete overview of this
person or the company because of the
360-degree view and the Ticketing sys-
tem,” says Olaf Hoge, former services
manager at Dutch educational publisher Noordhoff Uit-
gevers, which uses Klopotek’s CRM solution. “We can more
or less predict why they are calling us and start analyzing
those reasons. For example, does our marketing department
have to optimize the information on a certain product? Or is
the information provided written in a style that is too com-
plex to understand? Along the way, we also learn about how
to improve the products for our customers.”
Over at F.A. Davis Company, the implementation of Klo-
potek’s Product 360° and Early Title Manager has enabled
the publisher to explore new ways of setting up its products.
George Ricciardi, Davis’s director of management informa-
Browser-Based Pagination
Engine from TNQ
Leveraging the power of HTML to
reduce production time and costs
BY TERI TAN
I
n STM publishing, pagination consumes the better part
of production budgets. TNQ is offering a unique solution
to this labor and cost challenge: HTML-based Page Cen-
tral. With this tool, TNQ expects to reduce the cost of
production per page to half of what is incurred today.
“Since its 2014 launch, more than 375,000 authors have
used Page Central, and the engine has generated over 4.25
million pages to produce 1,360 journals, 200 books, and 40
book series,” says CEO Abhigyan Arun. “It has proven to be
a stable and fast pagination engine that renders high-quality
HTML pages—all of these at half the cost and five times the
benefit.”
12 www.publishersweekly.com
APRIL 2018
tion systems and internet services, says, “The users are going
to become more independent and satisfied in their work and
use of the system. Stream will also help us to look at different
ways to generate different types of revenue.”
Dutch publisher Brill went live with the Stream app
Authors Online in June 2017. This app enables the publisher
to offer authors more transparency and detailed royalty
information as well as the ability to create electronic royalty
statements.
Thieme Publishing Group’s finance system continues to
use SAP while all publishing-related processes have migrated
to Klopotek. Thieme was one of the first
publishers to start using Klopotek prod-
ucts, back in 1994. Ongoing workflow
enhancements will see the company
receiving two solutions in the areas of
contract creation and chapter-based business that run on the
Stream platform.
Using Stream is fun, says CTO Peter Karwowski of Klopo-
tek. “In the Stream world, the user is at the center of every-
thing. Today, the success of software stands or falls with user
acceptance. Furthermore, our dashboard and UI technology
offer users a standard that enables flexibility with a huge
amount of customization to suit their needs.” ■
To discover the fun of using Klopotek Stream and further
understand its flexibility, head over to booth 3E10 and try
out a live demo on a tablet or desktop.
Abhigyan
Arun
Page Central is about transi-
tioning from PDF- to HTML-
based typesetting. The product
is also available as an indepen-
dent SaaS integrated with Proof
Central, TNQ’s proofing plat-
form for books and journals.
A patent-protected browser-based pagination engine, Page
Central reflows the XML, cookie-cuts it to pages, controls
line breaks, and manages the header, footer, and page num-
bers. It also places figures, tables, and footnotes close to
where they are cited. “It performs everything you’d expect
your typesetting engine to do. In other words, it is your own
DTP in the browser,” adds Arun.
To make Page Central easier and even more accessible,
TNQ recently launched Page Central OnDemand. With this
on-demand hub, TNQ has simplified the process to about
five steps. According to Gary Scott, v-p of product manage-
APRIL 2018
ment, “The portal, pagecentralhub.com/ondemand, can be
accessed on a recent version of any browser. Upload JATS
XML, choose a template from the many that are available,
and instantaneously see your XML page transformed into a
beautifully paginated HTML page.”
“You can then use typesetting features to make adjust-
ments to floats and tables and download the file as a PDF,”
Scott says. “Everything happens completely in
your browser—no server round-trips. We can
also configure your custom DTD/schema and
your template in Page Central.” He adds that
Page Central is fully API based and can be inte-
grated into any XML-based production workflow or pub-
lishing platform.
“The power of Page Central lies in its native HTML form
where you get all the interactivity, multimedia, interactive
charts and graphs, and internal/external links. It is a beauti-
ful page that you can interact with,” Scott says.
With the publishing world looking at ePub3 and HTML5
for fluid content creation, content chunking, and mixing and
matching of multiple products from various sources, PDF is
fast losing its primacy as the de facto document format, Arun
says. “Page Central leverages the power of HTML in the
browser. It does not require a plug-in to work. It uses the
standard browser to paginate in seconds, handling with ease
The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
the complexity of layout and design—with the paginated
output looking exactly like a typeset PDF but generating
what is essentially a pure HTML page.”
Now that the TNQ team has perfected the scripts to pro-
duce intricate journal and book styles, HTML-based Page
Central is challenging traditional typesetting tools by open-
ing up possibilities for operational efficiencies and demysti-
fying the process, making it available to everyone.
As Arun points out, “For publishers, this ability to
paginate anywhere in the editorial workflow
using standard browsers translates to significant
savings.”
Together with its HTML-authoring platform, AuthorCafé,
and proofing engine, Proof Central 3.0, Page Central marks
what Arun calls TNQ’s “decisive push to take the entire pub-
lishing process into the online space to provide production
efficiencies, shorter turnaround time, and cost savings for cli-
ents.” Arun elaborates, “These products also align with our
vision of post-PDF publishing and single-URL publishing.” ■
To learn more about Page Central and single-URL publish-
ing, head over to booth 7D10 and check out the “Page
Central: The Future of Typesetting, Leveraging the Power
of HTML and Browser” session in the Buzz Theatre on
Wednesday, April 11, at 11:30 a.m.
 APRIL 2018
The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
NEW READER EXPERIENCE
WITH PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Impelsys Goes Beyond
DIGITAL EDITION
Books and Journals
Creating unique solutions to meet
expanding publishing requirements
BY TERI TAN

I
mpelsys’s iPublishCentral Scholar takes the center stage
at London this year. “With this platform, professional
associations, societies, and scholarly publishers can look
beyond journals to offer diverse range of repurposed
content, including e-books, videos, digital courseware,
regulatory certifications as well as accreditations to enhance
learning outcomes and progress of science,” says Uday
Majithia, assistant v-p for marketing and presales, adding
that two clients are set to go live with iPublishCentral
Scholar within the next couple of months.
“Scholar is about helping publishers to avoid the cumber-
some tasks of maintaining multiple platforms for different
content types while increasing operational efficiencies by
interacting with just one vendor for all their digital publishing
requirements,” Majithia says. “At the same time, it will deliver
a unified customer experience and valuable consumer analyt-
ics across different content types.” In fact, the Impelsys team
runs an SME-driven courseware development unit that devel-
ops SCORM compliant digital courses for
associations and societies.
Impelsys’s reader technology (both online
and offline) renders a variety of content types
and formats including books, journals, videos, audio files, and

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digital courses. “It is probably the only reader out there that
offers such content versatility,” says Majithia, whose team is
working with a multinational entertainment conglomerate to

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delivery infrastructure.
Then there is iPublishCentral Health, an exclusive aggre-
gator platform for the delivery and management of health-
care learning and skills development resources. Says
Majithia: “It helps to reduce the on-boarding turnaround
time for nurses, allied healthcare professionals, and non-clin-
ical staff, and delivering great training experiences including
simulations. This platform improves training effectiveness,
satisfies hospital compliance training needs, and allows
access to a variety of healthcare content sourced from major
healthcare publishers.” ■
Learn more about the above platforms at booth 3A48, and
attend “Looking Beyond Journal Publishing: An Integrated
Approach to Professional and Scholarly Content Manage-
ment,” a session by Stefan Kendzierskyj, executive v-p and
head of EMEA and Asia Pacific, on Wednesday, April 11, at
10:45 a.m. in the Buzz Theatre.

14 www.publishersweekly.com
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CNPIEC
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
The Rush to Censor
The Internet Is On
And as defenders of free speech,
publishers must stay engaged
BY PETER BRANTLEY
O
n Dec. 8, 2017, a group of internet policy experts
and lawyers gathered in San Francisco for a confer-
ence on the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s
1997 decision in Reno v. American Civil Liberties
Union. That landmark ruling struck down parts
of a 1996 law, the Communications Decency Act
(CDA), that would have greatly restricted free
speech online. Yet nestled within the CDA was
a “safe harbor” provision that, in its wisdom,
the court let stand: Section 230, which states:
“No provider or user of an interactive com-
puter service shall be treated as the publisher
or speaker of any information provided by
another information content provider.”
Broadly speaking, the CDA sought to impose
decency standards on the internet, much like those that
exist for broadcast television. Had the CDA survived as
passed, it’s likely that many popular internet forums today
would never have gotten off the ground, due to liability con-
cerns. Instead, the legal and policy protections the court left
intact in Section 230 are what enables internet users today to
upload their own videos to YouTube, post photos or rants on
Facebook, and debate topics on Reddit. It is this language
that has allowed free speech to blossom online. But that
could all be about to change.
Free Speech at Risk
In March, the U.S. Congress easily passed the Allow States
and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, a law that
guts Section 230 liability protections from hosting sites that
foster or facilitate prostitution or sex trafficking. The law
may be well-intentioned, but, critics say, it is so broad and
badly written that it will force networks and websites to
police and in many cases censor their users.
“Facing the risk of ruinous litigation, online platforms will
have little choice but to become much more restrictive in
what sorts of discussions—and what sorts of users—they
allow, censoring innocent people in the process,” explained
the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Elliot Harmon in a
recent blog post. Already, for example, Craigslist has taken
down its popular personal ads.
What’s disturbing, too, as Harmon and other critics have
16 www.publishersweekly.com
APRIL 2018
pointed out, is that our current laws are already sufficient to
prosecute bad actors online—internet-centric legislation is
simply not necessary. And that lawmakers and a handful of
tech companies so eagerly embraced the scaling back of Sec-
tion 230 protections fills free speech advocates with dread—
if the threat of sex trafficking can yield such concessions
today, what’s next?
In fact, free speech on the internet today is facing a barrage
of attacks, not only from legislators and regulators, but from
changes in the very fabric of the internet itself. As Alissa Coo-
per, chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force, has noted,
these days “one almost needs a content delivery network
[CDN] to intermediate and protect speech.”
Indeed, the power of these CDNs became apparent last
summer when Cloudfare banned the neo-Nazi website the
Daily Stormer. In a blog post, Cloudfare’s Matthew Prince
explained the company’s decision—and why the decision is
so dangerous. “Without a clear framework,” Prince
wrote, “a small number of companies will largely
determine what can and cannot be online.”
Thus far in its short history, the internet has
been the most lightly regulated major infra-
structure ever invented. But as it has continued
to link together people and ideas from across
the globe, it has been falling under increasing
scrutiny—and, of course, not just in America. The
internet is a tightly walled garden in China. India has
been working to influence network governance through
its International Telecommunication Union. And parts of the
Middle East still restrict internet access.
The Greater Guarantee
It was obvious 20 years ago that hosting platforms like AOL
could never effectively wield “intermediary liability” for the
vast amount of content that users post. Yet today, with grow-
ing concerns over “fake news” and the power of large social
media and other internet companies to frame social dia-
logue, there are now more and more breathless demands for
just such accountability. We must tread carefully.
As historic defenders of free speech and the free flow of
ideas, publishers must stay engaged with what’s happening
online. Though these recent efforts may not seem like an
immediate threat to the work of book publishers, the chilling
of speech on the internet poses significant risks. After all,
what we want the internet to become—just how raucous a
debate we want it to support—is a discussion that will not
only set the boundaries of the internet, but of the greater
guarantee of free speech. ■
Editor’s note: Additional reporting for this piece was done
by Andrew Richard Albanese.
PW contributing editor Peter Brantley is director of online
strategy at the University of California, Davis, Library.
APRIL 2018
The Digital Surge Continues
In Spanish Markets
Spanish-language
digital sales are
bucking global trends
BY JAVIER CELAYA
I
n English-speaking countries, digital
sales for traditional publishers are report-
edly flat or in decline. But the 2018 edi-
tion of “The Spanish Markets Digital
Evolution Report”—compiled by Dos-
doce.com in collaboration with Bookwire
(the leading Spanish-language e-book and
audiobook distribution platform)—indicates strong digital
growth in Latin America and Spain over the past two years.
Most midsize and independent publishers in Spain
reported 2017 digital revenue up 45%–55% from 2016. In
addition, according to the most recent Libranda report, the
Big Five publishers in the region also saw digital growth of
roughly 12%. Data in these reports, as well as in other
sources, suggest that digital sales in Spain now represent
between 10% and 12% of total book sales (print, e-books,
and audiobooks), including sales of academic titles and of
self-published books, which also continue to grow.
In 2017, Latin American publishers experienced on aver-
age a 39% increase in digital sales due to a broader selection
of available e-books. Year after year, more and more Spanish
and Latin American publishers are converting their print
books into e-books, which has enabled them to better serve
their local markets and to export their titles worldwide. In
the past two years, close to 400 midsize publishers and inde-
pendent publishing houses of all sizes in Spain and Latin
America have increased their e-book offerings, resulting in
more than 30,000 new digital titles in the market.
In addition to exporting large numbers of books in print,
Spanish publishers now also export a considerable amount
of digital content. In fact, nearly half of Spanish digital sales
are currently generated outside Spain, in markets including
Latin America (33%), the Hispanic population of the U.S.
(9%), Europe (4%), and the rest of the world (1%).
Spanish-Language Audio Up
Spanish-language audiobook sales are also surging (as are
sales of audiobooks in other languages), driven by increas-
ingly strong interest from agents and publishers, and by the
arrival in Spain and Latin America of streaming and à la
carte platforms specializing in audiobooks, such as Audible,
The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT
Bookchoice, Google, Kobo, and Storytel.
This coincides with the trend in other mar-
kets, where this format has registered
roughly 20% annual increases in sales over
each of the past three years, making it the
fastest-growing digital model in the entire
book world.
Audiobooks have gained a firm foothold
in the Spanish publishing sector, where there
has been a robust 33% increase in the num-
ber of audiobook titles on offer in 2017 over
2016. According to an infographic by Story-
tel (currently the leading audiobook stream-
ing platform in Spain, with a catalogue of
close to 1,500 audiobooks), there are cur-
rently more than 3,000 audiobooks in Spanish on offer com-
pared to just 1,000 only a few years ago.
Specifically, just over 77% of available Spanish audio-
books are fiction titles. And, according to Storytel’s analysis,
60% of audiobooks in Spanish are produced in Castilian
Spanish, whereas 40% are in Latin American Spanish, thus
providing a range of audio experiences to Spanish readers on
both sides of the Atlantic.
The growth of mobile is also driving digital book sales in
Spanish markets, and especially sales of digital audio con-
tent. For example, the data shows that 92% of Spanish
audiobook buyers use smartphones to listen to audiobooks.
Subscriptions
Although unit sales in online stores such as Amazon, Apple,
and Kobo continues to be the dominant business model
among publishers, library licenses and subscription plat-
forms are becoming more relevant in Spanish markets.
According to the Bookwire report, in 2017, profits from
subscription platforms, especially in Mexico, the U.S., and
Germany surpassed 6% of total digital sales; in contrast, in
2015, they only represented 1%.
There’s strong indication that the growing subscription
culture will radically transform consumers’ cultural habits in
the Spanish markets over the next decade, in Spain and Latin
America. And the recent arrival of leading international
entertainment and cultural content platforms in Spanish mar-
kets—e.g., Netflix, HBO, Spotify, and Storytel—will likely
accelerate the growth of subscription-based services. ■
Javier Celaya is a member of the executive board of the Digital
Economy Association of Spain and CEO and founder of
Dosdoce.com, an online portal that analyzes the impact of
new technologies on the publishing sector.
17
 The DIGITAL SPOTLIGHT APRIL 2018

Program Highlights keynotes, and more, offering a wide lens on the issues facing
publishers today. Below, we’ve culled a few highlights.
As always, consult the LBF website (londonbookfair.co.uk)
The London Book Fair once again for the full program and for any program changes. There is
offers a great slate of programming also a great slate of authors set to appear at this year’s fair,
including Rachel Abbott, David Baldacci, Laura Bates, Jonny
for attendees

B
etween the rights trade, meeting with vendors and
service providers, and you know, trying to find an
hour or two to enjoy springtime in London, time is
always at a premium at the London Book Fair. But
with so much to catch up on—whether data policy,
blockchain, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, or
#MeToo, or the impact of Brexit—be sure to find some
time to take in some of the strong programs at this year’s
fair, which includes a full slate of seminars, panel debates,
Benjamin, Lauren Child, Natasha Devon, Nick Harkaway,
Adam Kay, Chris Riddell, Joanna Trollope, Jacqueline Wilson,
Kit de Waal, and many more.
And of course this year’s Market Focus country is the Bal-
tics. In addition to a number of Baltic author appearances, the
Baltic program includes panels covering a wide range of
themes, including poetry, children’s books, writing history as
fiction, education publishing, top literary events in the Baltics,
and the challenges and opportunities of publishing literature
in translation.

Tuesday, April 10
➤ What Works Education Conference
(Olympia Conference Centre, 9:30 a.m.–1
p.m.). For educational publishers and tech-
nology providers seeking insights into inter-
national developments impacting their
industries and markets.
➤ Censor, Advocate, or Disruptor? The
Role of Publishers in an Evolving Publishing
& Media Landscape (Club Room, 10 a.m.–
12:15 p.m.). The London Book Fair
launches its inaugural Freedom to Publish
seminar in association with the Interna-
tional Publishers Association.
Fighting censorship and fostering the free
flow of ideas has always been a core pub-
lishing issue—and as the title suggests,
issues that have become more complex in
the digital age.
➤ Collaboration and Community: The
Transition to Open Access (the Faculty,
11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.). The OA movement
continues to grow and is reshaping the
scholarly publishing enterprise.
➤ A Bookish Brexit, Hosted by the Publish-
er’s Association (Olympia Room Grand
Hall, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.). Get an
update on Brexit negotiations and their
potential impact on the book business.
➤ Blockchain for Books: Towards an
Author-Centred Payment Model (Olympia
Room Grand Hall, 2:30–3:30 p.m.). Maybe
you’ve heard of blockchain technology, even
played around with Bitcoin? Find out how
the technology might soon impact publishing.
➤ Taking the Fear out of AI: Ethics,
Machine versus Human, and Real-Life
Applications (the Buzz, 3:15–3:45 p.m.).
Make no mistake, AI is growing more and
more powerful. Come get a status report,
(and maybe pick up a few pointers that may
one day help you defeat Skynet).
Wednesday, April 11
➤ The Research & Scholarly Publishing
Forum (Conference Centre, 9 a.m.–1:20
p.m.). A must for anyone in the academic
and scholarly publishing space, with topics
including the impact of Open Access and
the future of copyright and practices like
peer review. Consult the LBF website for
the full program. Note: this is a ticketed
event.
➤ The Three Ages of Bookselling (High
Street Theatre, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.).
Booksellers have enjoyed a rebound in
recent years. Come hear more about why,
and what might be up next.
➤ Doing It Live: Taking Book Campaigns
to the Next Level (Olympia Room Grand
Hall, 1–2 p.m.). Discoverability remains a
key challenge in this digital age of abun-
dance. How can you better break out your
books and authors?
➤ PJ Masks: From Books to Consumer
Products, a Case Study (CrossMedia The-
atre, 2:30–3:30 p.m.). Learn about product
marketing from the experience of PJ Masks,
a popular kids’ show.
➤ The Future of Publishing: How to Thrive
in the Evolving Book World with Trail-
blazer Award Winners Past and Present
(Club Room National Hall Gallery, 2:30–
3:30 p.m.). The title says it all—come get
some sound perspective on what’s next for
the book business.
➤ Educational Publishing in the Baltics:
From Soviet State-Sponsored Textbooks to
Digital Learning and Teaching Materials in
30 Years (the Faculty, 4–5 p.m.). This year’s
Market Focus on the Baltics features a great
slate of topics—and this one looks fascinat-
ing.
➤ The Inclusivity Toolbox: Practical Tips
for Understanding Inclusion (Club Room,
National Hall Gallery, 4–5 p.m.). Diversity
and inclusion are important topics in the
publishing world.
Thursday, April 12
➤ CMC Exchange @ LBF (Olympia Con-
ference Centre, 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.). An event
for anyone looking to buy and sell chil-
dren’s IP—especially those looking to meet
potential partners in broadcasting and chil-
dren’s content production. Consult the LBF
website for the full program. Note: this is a
ticketed event.
➤ Festivals Unbound (High Street Theatre,
1–3 p.m.). Literary festivals are finding more
and more exciting ways of growing, react-
ing, and responding to our times. This panel
will explore scalable models, franchises,
niche offers, and commercial opportunities.
➤ Book Blog Awards (CrossMedia Theatre,
2:30–3:15 p.m.). A new feature for LBF, the
awards recognize bloggers and other social
media influencers. Among the awards given
are Book Blogger of the Year, “Bookstagram-
mer” of the Year, and “BookTuber” of the Year.
➤ The Write Stuff (Author HQ, 2:30–4 p.m.).
As it has since its inception, Author HQ has
a strong program for indies and self-published
authors. But get there early—the space is
always jammed. ■

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