The inner dome mural at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Hospicio Cabañas, now a museum in Guadalajara. The work is José Clemente Orozco’s Hombre de Fuego, or Man of Fire. The mural depicts a colossal human figure falling from a burning sky. Image – Getty: Mofles
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Borghino: ‘Showing How Much Innovation Is Taking Place’
Getting in on the world book business’ autumn awards season, the offices of the International Publishers Association in Geneva today (September 19) have released the organization’s shortlist for its 2024 IPA Innovation in Publishing Award.
The winner is to be named in Mexico at the 34th IPA International Publishers Congress at Guadalajara (December 3 to 6).
Now only in its second year, this is an award program intended “to strengthen and unite the publishing industry to move forward together and seize new opportunities for publishing practices and environments, adapting to new circumstances and challenges.
“Specifically, the award recognizes groups or individuals whose work implements innovative publishing practices that can be replicated by others and benefit the industry.”
José Borghino
In announcing the shortlist, IPA secretary-general José Borghino is quoted, saying, “We received some excellent nominations for this second IPA Innovation in Publishing Prize covering lots of different aspects of publishing and showing just how much innovation is taking place in our sector.”
Awards are expected to weigh in regularly at the Publishers Congress, where winners are to be announced:
- The IPA Innovation in Publishing Award
- The IPA Prix Voltaire
- The IPA Champion honor
- Two accolades in the WIPO Accessible Books Consortium Excellence Awards
The IPA Innovation in Publishing Award 2024 Shortlist
There are four shortlistees on the list for this year’s honor innovation. Commentary about each shortlistee comes from IPA’s jurors for the competition.
Publishing 2030 Accelerator
- Co-founders: Jorg Engelstädter (Canon) and Rachel Martin (Elsevier)
- Co-chairs: Michiel Kolman (Elsevier) and Richard Charkin (Mensch Publishing)
The Publishing 2030 Accelerator, introduced at the time of COP 26—and supported by IPA in being established—is a structured commitment program on climate change offered to international publishers, as Publishing Perspectives readers know. As the award program puts it, the Publishing 2030 Accelerator project addresses ways to approach sustainable development and growth in publishing, supporting national and international collaborative efforts.
In its commentary today on the shortlistees, the IPA writes that the Publishing 2030 Accelerator “has the same limitation that many other orchestrated programs have: If signatories do not actually take the program’s steps and authentically fulfill their commitments to do that, then it becomes a kind of credentialling checkbox.” The organization continues, however, “With its initial intent in place and its information and tools being made available openly, it’s the most lucid ‘first step’ publishing-industry coordination effort mounted to date.”
Renew the Book
- Groep Algemene Uitgevers – Dutch Publishers Association
Another program with which Publishing Perspectives readers have long been familiar, the Netherlands’ Renew the Book named its fifth round of honorees in June as part of a Renew the Book “Innovation Congress” in Amsterdam. The organization strikes some as a throwback to the early years of the digital transition in book publishing when start-ups were busy offering services that they perceived could be useful to publishers—and publishers often felt that entrepreneurs were less familiar with book publishing than they needed to be.
So it is that the IPA announcement describes Renew the Book as being “an example of how to encourage startups and inject new energy into the industry. More extensive mentoring might help it become a program that guides winning start-ups to know what publishing actually needs. While this project has a Pan-European angle, the goal of the program could be adopted in other territories. The intent and persistence of this particular program is appreciated as a model.”
Reading Rationales
- MVB GmbH
The parent company of MVB GmbH in Germany is the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Germany’s publishers and booksellers association, and MVB is a publishing services company, the provider of Pubnet, for example, an electronic ordering system, and Pubeasy, a book ordering system that connects bookstores and publisher inventories.
MVB’s Reading Rationales program is described as a “neuroscientific” classification system designed to help make emotional elements of various books part of a discoverability protocol for publishers and retailers. The goal is an optimization of reader preference for comprehensive marketing.
Academia Editorial Júnior (AEJ)
- Sindicato Nacional dos Editores de Livros (SNEL)
Not unlike programs found in other countries, the Brazilian publishers association’s Academia Editorial Júnior is recognized by IPA in its media messaging today for “its ability to contribute to a more equitable entry-level platform to build a more diverse job market in publishing.”
Stressing the program’s combination of inclusion and diversity with publishing training, the Innovation Award likes the connections that the Brazilian program makes with book fairs. IPA points to SNEL’s “focus on marginalized populations and commitment to inclusive publishing, as well as the generation of skilled employment in the industry” as a key to sustainability.
“With good publishing partnerships in the industry—and, we hope, a willingness to make opportunities genuinely available to all qualified who are interested—the program could offer guidance for other countries’ publishing employment outreach efforts.”
The IPA’s International Publishers Congress is being produced by the Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial Mexicana (CANIEM), led by IPA past president Hugo Setzer, and by the Association of American Publishers, led by president and CEO Maria A. Pallante.- Registration and information can be found here.
The IPA’s International Publishers Congress is being produced by the More from Publishing Perspectives on the International Publishers Association is here, more on the IPA’s biennial International Publishers Congress series is here, and more on international publishing and book awards is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.