Read our previous interviews with
- Renew the Book by Groep Algemene Uitgevers (GAU, Netherlands), and
- AEJ Academia Editorial Júnior by the Sindicato Nacional dos Editores de Livros (SNEL, Brazil).
Our THIRD initiative is The Publishing 2030 Accelerator – co-founded by Jörg Engelstädter and Rachel Martin (co-chairs Michiel Kolman and Richard Charkin).
Please tell us a little more about The Publishing 2030 Accelerator. What makes your project innovative?
The Publishing 2030 Accelerator was an ambitious initiative aimed at propelling the publishing industry into the next decade with innovation, adaptability, and sustainable growth. To do this, the project supported and tested early-stage ideas that would prioritize climate action in the book sector. Over the course of its 18-month duration, the accelerator achieved significant milestones and outcomes, empowering both established and smaller organizations to act on climate change today. Its legacy includes:
- The development of the first carbon label prototype launched after only 3 months at Frankfurt Book Fair during the IPA’s Sustainability Summit. Over the course of the next 12 months, the team consulted industry experts and published the first agreed methodology to account for the carbon impact of an individual print book. This free whitepaper lays the foundation for an emerging carbon standard across all publishing sectors to transparently understand and report on the carbon impact of an individual book.
- One contributor to the publishing industry’s environmental impact is the carbon emissions from the global shipping of printed books. By nurturing a culture of innovation, collaboration, and inclusivity, its second workstream defined a concept for an international network of digital print-on-demand facilities, whereby print files can be shared globally, and the books produced locally to minimize transportation distance. The resulting free whitepaper outlined the opportunities that such a distributed printing network opens for publishing and highlights the challenges faced by publishers, sharing considerations about potential next steps
- The final workstream explored the role of finance in driving progress towards net zero targets. This was explored in a series of interviews with CFOs from Bloomsbury, Wolters Kluwer, Planeta, Elsevier, Spinger Nature, Wiley and Taylor and Francis. The resulting whitepaper integrates the question around assumed trade-offs between sustainability and profitability.
What are your hopes for the future of the project?
The Publishing 2030 Accelerator was conceived as a collaborative independent initiative as a direct outcome of the first IPA Sustainability Summit in 2021. It brought together innovative and passionate stakeholders from across the book chain and at its heart created a manifesto that defined 5 parameters to guide its work over three initial workstreams. Contributors pledged to take responsibility, be agile, freely share experience and outcomes and hold each other accountable for driving action on climate change. The project created concrete published whitepapers and prototypes that have redefined the possibilities of the industry to address climate change and provide clear direction for further national and international collaboration. A model that could be used and adapted for other brilliant ideas!
How do you think your project could inspire other initiatives elsewhere?
The resulting whitepapers and insights are free to use and are aimed at helping to inform the climate action conversations in every book market in every country. We already see some of the conversations starting for example in Portugal. Leading on from the work produced as part of the book carbon footprint, It was possible to provide an initial evaluation of the carbon impact of the Portuguese general publishing sector in 2023 and using the carbon methodology test carbon labels on Portuguese books. This has triggered workshops and meetings to understand and support carbon data collection and initiatives in the Portuguese market.
Our FOURTH initiative is Reading Rationales – by MVB GmbH (Germany)
Please tell us a little more about MVB.
We are a technology and information provider with a team of more than 150 motivated book people at five locations on three continents. We are convinced that books can change the world. To do so, we want them to show their full potential. As the central interface of the book industry, it is our task to make books visible. Therefore, we dedicate ourselves to books worldwide, connect the various book markets and shape the future of the industry with diversity and innovation. Together with our partners from publishing houses and bookstores in Germany and abroad, we develop digital platforms and media formats that provide orientation in the book market and improve the flow of information about books.
What inspired your project?
The starting point was a dramatic decline in reach in the German book market. In recent years, the German book market lost millions of buyers, even though they experienced reading as a positive activity. To gain a better understanding of the processes that drive purchases, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) commissioned market research using the neuroscientific limbic approach. It turned out that there was a fundamental lack of orientation, especially among people with less affinity for books, because the logistical and content-related categorization via product groups and Thema classification was inadequate.
The classification system “Reading Rationales” was derived from the findings by clustering the unconscious needs of potential book buyers, specific recommendations for action included. To promote these, MVB works with partners from all areas of the book industry to develop examples of best practice and offers personalized advice on how to get started with Reading Rationales.
Tell us a bit more about your project. What makes your project innovative?
Consistently focusing on the new standard allows comprehensive product and process optimization that results in increased visibility and more efficiency in all areas – from program planning to manuscript checking and editing to the layout and marketing of individual titles. Considering Reading Rationales when designing and presenting the product range in bookshops creates new buying impulses and increases sales because customers are better able to orientate themselves on site and online. Simultaneously, the focus on needs ensures lasting reading pleasure because the titles purchased specifically serve the respective Reading Rationale.
What is innovative is not only the change to the customer’s perspective, but also the assignment of individual book titles to the new standard. This is done automatically for all titles listed in the German books in print catalogue Verzeichnis Lieferbarer Bücher (VLB) based on artificial intelligence, which analyses metadata (bibliographic and content information, keywords, classifications, covers, reading samples). In this way, MVB was able to ensure the comprehensive application of Reading Rationales according to standardized decision criteria right from the start. Not to forget, our experience shows that working with Reading Rationales provides an opportunity to comprehensively scrutinize and optimize existing processes.
What are your hopes for the future of the project?
We hope that books will be clearly positioned in future and send clear signals as to what needs they fulfil, so that sustainable reading pleasure is not left to chance. At best, we can not only halt the negative trend in the number of book buyers, but reverse it. And it would be great if other markets followed this example.
How do you think your project could inspire other initiatives elsewhere?
To find new solutions to existing problems, you have to change your perspective. Real customer centricity is not easy to realize but crucial to improve our business. Since the unconscious buying needs identified in our project are universal, the Reading Rationales approach has the potential to create sustainable reading pleasure worldwide. The prerequisite is a differentiated product range and a broad metadata base. Apart from language customization, the AI model only requires additional training data, for example to consider different viewing habits regarding cover design.