Three weeks, three conferences, three million thoughts

The past three weeks have seen me write up reports on three stellar publishing conferences: the London Book Fair’s “Building Inclusivity in Publishing” conference; The Literary Consultancy (TLC)’s “What’s Your Story?” symposium; and the Society of Young Publisher (SYP)’s annual Autumn conference, this year on the theme of “Making a Bestseller.” Here’s some write ups – the SYP one is even FREE to read!

Words are no longer enough: inclusivity gets gritty
“A theme that became clear early on in the day was that the industry has been treating diversity and inclusivity as if they are optional, which for those they are excluding they are not. ‘We’re not here to talk about diversity in publishing, we’re here to talk about humanity,’ said Crystal Mahey-Morgan, one of the keynote speakers and founder of OWN IT! Publishing. ‘We’ve got so caught up in the box ticking and PC conversations, we’ve forgotten why inclusivity is so important…'”

TLC symposium: ‘What’s your story’ in the digital age
“We have to be careful as an industry about whom these laws of literary merit exclude. Now and in the past, writers of colour have often experienced difficulty being recognised in the literary world. ‘The idea that literary value is a liberal, free world isn’t true,’ said Cook. ‘Literary values are created in a process, and it is a process that has been party to brutal exclusion. We are talking about a system of violence. There is a certain kind of violence in this world and if you try to pretend that there isn’t, you misunderstand it.'”

SYP conference 2016: redefining successful books – FREE to view
“Having to point out that long-term sales and profits are just as valid as short-term ones seems to me to be a symptom of an industry increasingly concerned with short-term goals. The question I was left with is not what makes a bestseller, but whether, by its standard definition, a bestseller is an inherently good thing.”

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Report on the #ipgsc for SYP Press Forward

My final report from the IPG Annual Spring Conference is now officially live on the Society of Young Publishers’ Press Forward blog!  Here’s an excerpt, but head over to Press Forward if you want to keep reading.

It’s emerging that one of my favourite things about working in Publishing are the conferences. There’s a great sense of community around them, most particularly, perhaps, at the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) Spring Annual Conference. The Conference, which took place on the 4th-6th of March just outside Oxford, was a place for Independent Publishers across the UK – and for some internationally – to come together and discuss the state of the industry from our point of view.

Kicked off by a talk from Amazon’s Russell Jones, with what is becoming the company’s signature social media ban and delicate handling of question time, there ensued three days of sessions, talks and round-table events on everything Independent. From Facebook and handling online followings to the latest legal legislation that will impact publishers in 2015, few stones were left unturned as we were whipped through every aspect of the industry at top speed… [READ MORE]