While the headline grabbing election at the IPA’s General Assembly was the election of IPA’s next President and Vice President, the General Assembly also saw the confirmation of William Bowes, The Publisher Association’s General Counsel, as the new Chair of IPA’s Copyright Committee. He addressed the copyright committee with his vision for their future work and the challenges publishers faced.

A number of publishers were appointed to the Executive Committee including Roberto Banchik (Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial), YS Chi (Elsevier), Yumiko Hoshiba (Discover 21 Inc.) and Patrici Tixis (Planeta) as the new Directors from the Mexican, US, Japanese and Spanish publishers’ associations respectively. IPA President Michiel Kolman thanked Asoke Ghosh, Brian Murray, Norio Yamamoto and Daniel Fernández for their contribution to the IPA’s work. Pierre Dutilleul (SNE) from the French publishers’ association was re-appointed for a second three-year term, and IPA Treasurer, Werner Stocker, was re-appointed for one year.

One further election saw Gvantsa Jobava of the Georgian Publishers Association elected to the IPA’s Executive Committee, taking the seat vacated by Karine Pansa of Girassol Publishing in Brazil whose second term came to an end.

With her election and Georgia being the country of honour, it seemed only fitting that one of our guest speakers was Georgian author Tamta Melashvili. melashvili

You can read her speech here.

The day’s other guest speaker was WIPO Deputy Director General, Sylvie Forbin who presented a report on WIPO’s current and ongoing work around the SCCR and encouraged publisher to sign up to the Accessible Books Charter and the Publishers Circles Charter.

The Membership and Freedom to Publish Committees also saw new members elected:

Freedom to Publish Committee

  • Louise Adler (Melbourne University Press)
  • Sherif Bakr (Al Arabi Publishing and Distribution)
  • Ana María Cabanellas (Editorial Heliasta)
  • Myung-hwan Kim (Korean Publishers Research Institute)
  • Geoff Shandler (Custom House)

Membership Committee

  • Anna Baijars (Gummerus Publishers)
  • Emma House (The Publishers Association)
  • Maria A. Pallante (The Association of American Publishers)
  • Karine Pansa (Girassol Brasil)