At the 2024 edition of Readmagine at the Madrid headquarters of the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Talent Attraction and Training in Publishing
Having cleared its first decade, the Readmagine conference at Madrid’s Casa del Lector complex has an over-arching theme that captures its own, popular annual focus in the international book industry: Alive and Kicking: Innovation in the Book Industry.
What regular Readmagine attendees will realize is that there’s a newly broadening focus on publishing’s needs when it comes to talent attraction and training.
Laid out with a distinctive ear for music this year the Wednesday and Thursday core programming for Readmagine 2025 features both high-level policymakers’ views of the industry’s position, and the insights of book business professionals from inside the system.
For example, Rakuten Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn and Bookwire CEO Jens Klingelhöfer discuss The Book Ecosystem in 2025: Living on the Edge (per Aerosmith). Enrico Turrin—deputy director of the Federation of European Publishers—looks at The Figures in the Trans-Europe Express (kudos to Kraftwerk).
And then a group of policymakers and publishing organizational leaders talk about The Book Associations and Public Administrations: Knocking on Heaven’s Door?. That group of speakers includes:
- María José Galvez, the books lead with the Spanish ministry of culture
- Sonia Draga, president of the Federation of European Publishers
- Giovanni Hoepli, vice-president of the International Publishers Association (IPA)
- Moderator Fernando Benzo, general secretary with FGEE
Skills and What’s Needed
Luis González, left, and José Manuel Anta
Luis González—the director-general of the hosting body, the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, with FANDE/IPDA managing director José Manuel Anta—again have developed and are guiding the presentation of this invitational conference that runs Tuesday through Thursday (May 27 through 29), and includes for several of its speakers a special focus on skills in the world of publishing.
Indeed, a center-point session of the program on 1 p.m. Wednesday features González and Alma Čaušević of Slovenia’s publishing house Beletrina in a conversation with Publishing Perspectives titled Skills and Talent Attraction: Learning to Fly.
González will explicate some of the expertise he has used in his creation at the Foundation GSR of PARIX, named for the publisher in Segovia of Spain’s first book. PARIX now functions as “a school for the entire book value chain.” (You can see a story from us on PARIX here as it added a curriculum for the audio sector in publishing last year.)
One of the things the PARIX program is based in is the image that publishing has in the creative industries, based on a study, Perceptions of Publishing Professionals in the Exponential Era. And González will share with Readmagine’s audience, the kinds of challenges he and his GSR team have encountered in creating the PARIX course catalogue.
Related articcle: At Norway’s WEXFO: ‘Democracies Depend on Reading.’ Image – Getty: MartinPBGV
González has also made his Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez one of the five originating partners of the Democracies Depend on Reading (Dem Read) project spearheaded by Lillehammer’s World Expression Forum (June 2-3), and featured at last year’s Frankfurter Buchmesse. González will join Publishing Perspectives on June 2 in a 2 p.m. discussion, Literacy: A Precondition for Democracy, that session to be led by a keynote with Kristenn Einarsson—chief of the International Publishers Association‘s (IPA) Freedom to Publish committee and the founding CEO of WEXFO.
And Čaušević comes to the Readmagine stage from her work with Europe’s ThinkPub program, which specializes in “relevant and flexible training programs for small- and mid-sized publishers across Europe.
“It forced us to think not only about the object of learning,” she says, but also about the experience of learning—what people expect now, what formats work, and how to deal with generational and professional diversity.”
Alma Čaušević
ThinkPub’s offerings include a new B2C, B2B, ad B2B2C platform called Beletrina Digital.
Thinking of the reader as “a cultural user”, she says, “required us to rethink our internal roles, bring in new profiles and creating workflows that respond to a broader cultural experience. It also changed the types of talent we seek out and the way we think about audience engagement and product design.”
More Wednesday Programming
The questions Čaušević and González are tackling permeate the Readmagine agenda, which includes on Wednesday not only the above events, but also:
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Anna Lemp, left, and Sarah ArbuthnotA conversation with the Hachette Livre senior project manager for innovation and strategy Anna Lemp and Sarah Arbuthnot, the chief commercial and operations officer at Supadu, with Publishing Perspectives moderating: Innovating in the Publishing Industry: We Can Work It Out.
- How Accessibility Enhances Reading: Under Pressure is a timely look at issues and ways forward, with the implementation of the European Accessibitlity Act just a month away, when it becomes law on June 28. The Milan-based Fondazione’s chief accessibility officer Gregory Pellegrino moderating. Speakers here are to include Marius Sobczak, managing director at InkBook; Etienne Brealt, sales and marketing director at De Marque; and Svitlana Odnopozov, project manager with PocketBook.
- The traditional afternoon “Sandbox of Innovation” series of sponsors’ sessions on Wednesday then includes:
Thursday Programming Highlights
Opened by González with Arantza Larrauri, the Europe and Latin Ameriean market manager at De Marque, the Thursday focus at Readmagine casts innovation in terms of collaboration.
Mauro Morellini and Sandra Nyklasz
Publishing Projects Based on Collaboration—with a musical reference, With a Little Help From My Friends—is an 11:30 a.m. discussion with Publishing Perspectives‘ moderation that features Sandra Nyklasz, the CEO at Germany’s Zeilenfluss, and Mauro Morellini, CEO of Italy’s Morellini Editore.
Morellini, among other points, tells of how during the pandemic, smaller independent houses began to work together, crossing typical lines of competition even to promote each other’s lists.
More from Publishing Perspectives on digital publishing is here, more on Readmagine is here, more on the work of Luis González is here, more on the work of José Manuel Anta of FANDE/IPDA is here, more on world publishing conferences is here, and more on Spain’s publishing market is here.
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