All-digital Frankfurt Conference kicks off Special Edition book fair week

Lineup includes top-level publishing professionals and experts from across the globe

Frankfurt, 12 October – Under the motto “Signals of Hope: New Perspectives for a Stronger Future”, Frankfurter Buchmesse’s new all-digital Frankfurt Conference kicks off today, marking the start to the Special Edition book fair week. Spread over four days and packed solid with professional expertise, the conference programme offers discussions, Q&A sessions, and brief presentations featuring keynote speakers and panellists from around the world. International publishing and content experts will give insights and discuss current trends, business models and developments in the international publishing landscape, with four separate tracks running from Monday to Thursday (12-15 October) this week, putting a different area of the publishing industry in the spotlight each day between 3-5.30pm CEST.

Amongst other topics, the Frankfurt Conference programme will highlight the challenges to the industry experienced during COVID-19 in 2020, as well as the developments in the audio market, the international rights trade and in academic and scholarly publishing. The international speakers of Frankfurt Conference include the author Bernardine Evaristo, who was awarded the 2019 Booker Prize; James Daunt, CEO Barnes & Noble and Managing Director Waterstones; Jonathan Karp, CEO Simon & Schuster; Sophie de Closets, CEO Les éditions Fayard; Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO HarperCollins Publishers India; Jenny Fry, Commercial Director, Canongate; Jenna Blum and Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling authors and Co-Founders A Mighty Blaze; Jonas Tellander, CEO and Founder Storytel; Magnus Nytell, Head of International Expansion, Nextory; Julie MacKay, Director of International Content Acquisition, Scribd; Videl Bar-Kar, Global Head of Audio, Bookwire; Clarissa Pabi, Content Development Manager, Acast; Morten Strunge, Co-Founder and CEO Podimo; and many more.

Stefanie von Beöczy, Project Lead Frankfurt Conference & Professional Programme at Frankfurter Buchmesse, says: “After a challenging year for the whole publishing community, we are delighted that so many industry leaders, from across the globe, have agreed to participate in our online conference programme. We have a really inspiring lineup of speakers who will bring a wide range of knowledge and expertise to the discussions, and I’m looking forward to some lively debates across all our tracks.”

Participation in all Frankfurt Conference events is free of charge. The livestreams will be broadcast on www.buchmesse.de/conference2020; to access these, registration with My Book Fair at www.buchmesse.de is required. Via the online tool Slido, conference participants are encouraged to ask questions – the Slido codes will be announced during the events.
The main sponsor of Frankfurt Conference is Premium Partner Copyright Clearance Center.

Academic & Scholarly: Open Science and the management of a cultural change
Monday, 12 October 2020, 3 - 5.30 pm (CEST)
Open Science and the management of a cultural change will be in the focus of the Academic & Scholarly conference track today, chaired by Dr. Tiberius Ignat, Director of Scientific Knowledge Services. Catriona MacCallum, Director of Open Science at Hindawi Limited will be discussing the transformative power of Open Science for the scholarly publishing industry, whilst Sofie Wennström, Analyst and Managing Editor at Stockholm University will give her views on bibliodiversity in a time of crisis. Other international speakers and panellists include: Dr. Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost, UCL Library Services (UK); Kristiina Hormia-Poutanen, Director of Library Network Services at the National Library of Finland; Emily Poznanski, Director Strategy at De Gruyter (Germany); and Liz Ferguson, Vice President Open Research, Wiley (UK). The Academic & Scholarly track is organised in cooperation with Scientific Knowledge Services and sponsored by Wiley, Elsevier, TrendMD and knk Group.

Rights & Licensing: Rights trade in a COVID world / Focus on Canada and Spain
Tuesday, 13 October 2020, 3 - 5.30 pm (CEST)
Chaired by Jo Henry, Managing Director of the UK trade magazine BookBrunch, the Rights & Licensing track will start with an interview between Diane Spivey, publishing and rights consultant and former Hachette Group Contracts Director, and Andrew Nurnberg, Managing Director of Andrew Nurnberg Associates International Ltd. In this talk, the highly-respected literary agent will share his vision of publishing and the rights trade in a COVID-19 world, and exchange thoughts on the state of international book markets during the crisis. Sessions that follow will give expert insights into the rights and licensing markets of Spain and Canada, and will include speakers such as Anna Soler-Pont, founder of Pontas Agency; Sandra Pareja, Casanovas Lynch agency; Florence Bisch, International and Domestic Rights Director, Groupe Homme, and Janie Yoon, Editorial Director, House of Anansi. Further speakers include Tracey Armstrong, President and CEO, Copyright Clearance Center; Ronan Chander, Acting Head of Marketing for Brands & Partnerships, BBC Studios, and Risa Greenbaum, Assistant Vice President, International Consumer Products, Sesame Workshop. The Rights & Licensing track is sponsored by the Institute for Literary Translation Moscow; media partners are BookBrunch and Licensing International.

Publishing Insights – The publishing industry in times of COVID-19
Wednesday, 14 October 2020, 3 - 5.30 pm (CEST)
It has been a challenging year for the publishing industry. What processes have been accelerated in these times of crisis? What will keep publishers resilient going forward? And how can we make sure that topics like diversity and innovation are not left by the wayside at a time when many players in the publishing ecosystem are just trying to survive? At the Publishing Insights track on Wednesday, international voices from the book industry will discuss struggles and strategies for success during and after COVID-19. Booker Prize-winning British author Bernardine Evaristo will be a keynote speaker addressing the topics of diversity and inclusion, and James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble and Managing Director of Waterstones, will examine the changing retail landscape with Publishing Perspectives Editor-in-Chief Porter Anderson. CEOs from three important book markets – Anantha Padmanabhan, HarperCollins Publishers India; Jonathan Karp, Simon & Schuster, and Sophie de Closets, Les éditions Fayard – will share their experiences of guiding international companies through the pandemic. They'll discuss current challenges and new opportunities resulting from the coronavirus outbreak, as well as their expectations for the book business in the coming months. Other key speakers appearing at Publishing Insights include Jenny Fry, Commercial Director at Canongate (UK), and Simon de Jocas, President and Owner of the children’s publishing house Éditions Les 400 coups (Canada).

Audio: What does the future of audio look like?
Thursday, 15 October 2020, 3 - 5.30 pm (CEST)
Audio is the darling of the publishing industry and a steady growth driver. But what does it take to safeguard this development? How can publishers ensure that they are at the helm of the audio revolution? How can audiobooks and podcasts elevate content to reach new consumers and create new business opportunities? The Audio track on Thursday kicks off with a conversation on the market’s future between Elena Neira, the well-known audiovisual consultant from Spain, and Jonas Tellander, CEO of Storytel. The growth of the audio industry will be discussed by Lance Fitzgerald, Vice President, Content and Business Development, Penguin Random House (USA), and a session on the business models surrounding podcasts will include Morten Strunge, Co-Founder and CEO Podimo (Denmark), Alice Lloyd, Commissioning Editor for Audio & Podcasts, Trapeze Books (UK), and Clarissa Pabi from Acast. Later on, Videl Bar-Kar, Global Head of Audio at Bookwire, will give an exclusive presentation of the new report "Listen & Read: The Battle for Attention". Plus, an international panel of speakers - Magnus Nytell, Head of International Expansion at Nextory (Sweden), Mette Hammerich Caserta, Editor-in-Chief of SAGA Egmont International (Denmark) and Julie Mackay, Director of International Content Acquistion at Scrib’d (USA) - will discuss the subscription economy and consumption behaviour within the audio industry. Javier Celaya, CEO of Dosdoce.com, will be among the moderators of this track. The Audio track of Frankfurt Conference is sponsored by Bookwire, Beat Technology and Zebralution.

All information about timetables, speakers and individual sessions of Frankfurt Conference can be found here: www.buchmesse.de/conference2020.

A selection of press photos of conference speakers is available for download here: https://mvb.cloud.booklan.de/index.php/s/YG9jfDByayB7Hy3.

About Premium Partner Copyright Clearance Center:
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) builds unique solutions that connect content and rights in contextually relevant ways through software and professional services. CCC helps people navigate vast amounts of data to discover actionable insights, enabling them to innovate and make informed decisions. CCC, with its subsidiary RightsDirect, collaborates with customers to advance how data and information is integrated, accessed, and shared while setting the standard for effective copyright solutions that accelerate knowledge and power innovation. CCC is headquartered in Danvers, Mass. with offices across North America, Europe and Asia. To learn more about CCC, visit www.copyright.com
 

Contact for the media:
Press & Corporate Communication, Frankfurter Buchmesse
Katja Böhne, Vice President Marketing & Communications, Phone: +49 (0) 69 2102-138, press@buchmesse.de
Kathrin Grün, Head of Communications, Phone: +49 (0) 69 2102-170, gruen@buchmesse.de
Ines Bachor, PR Manager, Phone: +49 (0) 69 2102-189, bachor@buchmesse.de