A session at the 2023 London Book Fair at Olympia London. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
London Book Fair 2025 Announces Its Quartet of ‘Authors of the Day’
Organizers of London Book Fair (March 11 to 13)—this time under the direction of Adam Ridgway—have issued several programming notices as our publication year for 2024 closes.
The show’s Academic and Professional Publishing Conference will run across the three days of the trade show’s duration, this being a first. The three days’ programming themes set in the show’s Academic Theater:
- Day 1 (March 11): Business Models and Industry Outlook
- Day 2 (March 12): New Technologies and Trust
- Day 3 (March 13): Sustainability
Sheri Aldis
Several keynote addresses are planned during the three days of the conference. For example, a 30-minute keynote address on March 13 at 10:15 a.m. features Sheri Aldis, director of the United Nations’ Regional Information Centre for Western Europe on the topic, The Sustainability Goals of the Academic and Professional Publishing Industry.
Some of the planned sessions:
- Navigating the Future: The Art and Science of Librarianship in Uncertain Times (Day 1)
- A View on AI in Academic Publishing (Day 2)
- Unpacking the Digital Impact of Publications: Is Digital Really Sustainable? (Day 3)
Among speakers announced for the conference:
- David Baker, director at David Baker Consulting
- Kathryn Sharples, group vice-president in publishing strategy and policy at Wiley
- Hannah Hope, open research lead at the Welcome Trust
- Jin Jianbin, director of Tsinghua University Library
- Andri Johnston, digital sustainability lead at Cambridge University Press
- Angus Phillips, author at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing
- Matthew Brooke, director of collections and library services at the London Library
Details of the Academic and Professional Publishing Conference can be found here.
Last year’s London Book Fair drew a strong attendance of some 30,000 attendees, easily on a par with pre-pandemic attendance, and more than 1,000 exhibitors were on the floor at Olympia London.
For authors, the program has announced that the 2025 will include the popular Author HQ program, again sponsored by Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, and the Writers’ Summit will return—in the Writers’ Summit’s case at an offsite location, the Novotel West London, on March 10, the eve of the main show’s opening.
More details will be forthcoming here at Publishing Perspectives as we clear our winter break in publication in early January.
A Programming Note
On London Book Fair‘s opening day, March 11 at a 3 p.m. GMT, a discussion on the Olympia London Main Stage will feature the Publishers Association ‘s Dan Conway and the Association of American Publishers‘ president and CEO, Maria A. Pallante on AI and Copyright: Policy Developments in the UK and US.
Clearly, the timing of the close in late February of the government’s open consultation will make this a timely conversation, to be edited by Publishing Perspectives.
A description of this presentation reads, “AI is here to stay and so are the policy debates that will shape its development and deployment for years to come.
“In particular, many publishers around the world are watching developments in the UK and US, where regulators, legislators, and courts are weighing legal disputes and policy proposals that could have global ramifications for copyright laws.
“Please join us for a British, American, and decidedly human discussion on the most important issue of the day.”
On the exhibition floor of the 2023 London Book Fair. Image: LBF
More from Publishing Perspectives on London Book Fair is here, more on book fairs and trade shows in the world publishing industry is here, and more on the United Kingdom’s publishing market is here.
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