Organisations included in the Shortlist for the 2024 IPA Innovation in Publishing Award
The International Publishers Association (IPA) has just unveiled the shortlist for its prestigious 2024 Innovation in Publishing Award, showcasing innovative practices that aspire to set new standards and may inspire even more interesting developments in future.
What is the IPA?
The world’s largest federation of publishers’ associations, with 101 members from 81 countries, it was established in 1896 with a human rights mandate – to promote and protect publishing and to raise awareness of publishing as a force for economic, cultural and social development. Working with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and numerous international NGOs, the IPA champions the interests of book and journal publishing, opposing censorship while promoting literacy, copyright, and freedom to publish (among other things, by means of its most prestigious award, the IPA Prix Voltaire).
What is the IPA Innovation in Publishing Award?
It celebrates groups or individuals who implement innovative practices that can be adopted by others in the whole industry. The inaugural laureate (in 2023) was the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL) for its project Conexão Livraria. Independent publishers, publishing houses, Publishers Associations, and groups as well as individuals working within these institutions, can all submit initiatives that involve, but are not limited to, protecting copyright, upholding freedom to publish, executing successful digital transformations, achieving diversity and inclusiveness in the industry, and driving literacy, reading, or education.
Who is on the shortlist this year?
Four organisations have been nominated:
- Publishing 2030 Accelerator,
- Renew the Book,
- Reading Rationales, and
- AEJ Academia Editorial Júnior.
Here is brief information on each:
Publishing 2030 Accelerator
Co-founders: Jorg Engelstädter (Canon) and Rachel Martin (Elsevier)
Co-chairs: Michiel Kolman (Elsevier) and Richard Charkin (Mensch)
Is this the best organized and structured program offered to international publishers for mitigating the publishing industry’s impact on climate change? At present no doubt it is, and I am sure it is already influencing the largest publishing companies. Eventually, it will dribble down to the smallest of minnows like us, but the largest of minnows can grow quite big and, in view of the speed at which changes bear down on us nowadays, perhaps that Accelerator may influence us sooner than we think.
Harnessing cross-community expertise, collaboration and accountability, the Accelerator has generated, among other things, the publication of three informative papers on how to achieve sustainable development and growth in publishing. Further, for our sustainability as a global industry, there is guidance for the initial development of production standards, as well as for increasing national and international collaboration on the basis of data, evidence, and prototypes.
The Accelerator does have the limitation that afflicts all such voluntary initiatives: industry players may not sign up – or, having signed up, may not actually implement the program. But at least a flag has been planted in the sand and, with its information and tools available, it is a good step towards enabling the publishing industry to address the issues raised by climate change and by the AI revolution (especially in view of the even greater technology revolutions we can already foresee arriving much earlier than we had dared to imagine only a couple of years ago).
Renew the Book
Groep Algemene Uitgevers – Dutch Publishers Association
A Pan-European effort which has, for some years now, highlighted well-executed digital transformation and marketing projects which could impact the publishing industry, it encourages startups, and thus injects new energy into the industry. Publishing-related start-ups are offered a home so that they can innovate outside the framework of the existing book-publishing industry, and sell innovations to early adopters within the existing structure of publishing. The additional result is that industry players can identify and recruit new talent, and better tackle the major issue of succession planning. Not least, Renew the Book helps publishing to be seen as an energetic community for innovators.
Reading Rationales (Lesemotive)
MVB GmbH
Reading Rationales has developed a new classification standard and indeed an entirely new system for booksellers to help with marketing, by providing guidance on how to increase enjoyment of book- buying. Bundling together the unconscious motives that lead to book purchase, Lesemotive lays out a neuroscientific approach which makes the emotional side of book-buying, on the part of the customer, systematically accessible to all players in the book industry. This is technical innovation of course but, much more important, it is an investment in the creation of a business model for publishers and booksellers, offering us the opportunity to optimise the whole chain from securing and developing manuscripts, to the printing and production processes, as well as the structures for distribution, PR, publicity, and marketing. Naturally, I don’t know what the judges will think but, in my view, this is the one that should win.
AEJ Academia Editorial Júnior
Sindicato Nacional dos Editores de Livros
Right around the globe, it is a challenge to bring young talent into the industry, and that is what is addressed by the Sindicato Nacional dos Editores de Livros. Its contribution is essentially the creation of a more equitable entry-level platform as well as a sound training model to generate a more diverse pool of entrants, for example by linking training in the different processes involved in publishing with experience at an international book fair. The association focus on nurturing young professionals from marginalized communities, and the resulting emergence of skilled employees, is admirable.
What’s ahead?!
The winner of the Award will be announced at the 34th IPA International Publishers Congress, in Guadalajara, Mexico, from December 3 to 6.
Sadly, I am at present too small a minnow to even think of being with the greats of the publishing industry who will be there.
But even minnows, fighting to avoid being swept away in the flood of work, can survey the scene.