London Book Fair 2023

The publishing industry once again gathers at London's Olympia for the annual London Book Fair.

The London Book Fair returned in full swing. Publishing professionals from across the world attended the now familiar location of Olympia London.

Ukraine was this year’s ‘Guest Spotlight Country’ and First Lady Olena Zelenska provided a video message to remind attendees that “the books felt everything that the country feels”. She added that the importance of publishing to the heart of a culture is never so keenly felt as it is in wartime, when “books are our witnesses, eyewitnesses of what we experience”.

Last year, PLS and printers Halstan proudly partnered with the Ukrainian Embassy to print 16,000 books as part of the ‘Books Without Borders’ project which was created under the patronage of Zelenska. Both the First Lady and others referenced this project in the opening session of LBF.

Those in attendance on Tuesday also received useful information on how the industry is making strides towards better accessibility. The PLS-sponsored panel, organised by the Publishers Association, ‘Inclusion and Accessibility - Are We Nearly There?' outlined ways to make the most of assistive technologies as well as how to publish using accessibility design principles and advocate for greater accessibility.

Sustainability and the industry’s impact on the environment was also a popular issue with the Sustainability Hub opening on Tuesday to remarkable success. Keynote speaker and Mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn addressed ways to improve the environment, which is the topic of his upcoming book, and continued in conversation with Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association.

Dan was again on stage on Wednesday as part of the Charles Clark Memorial Lecture. A packed Focus Theatre heard Dr Andres Guadamuz, Reader in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex, give a talk on artificial intelligence and then discuss key questions with Dan and also answer audience questions on how developments in AI may impact copyright.

PLS' Policy and Communications Manager, Will Crook, spoke as part of Thursday’s Research & Scholarly Publishing Forum, chaired by Leslie Lansman, Springer Nature’s Global Permissions Manager, with Saskia Perriard-Abdoh, British Copyright Council’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs, and Duncan Campbell, Wiley’s Senior Director of Global Sales Partnerships. The panel discussed developments in Westminster over the past year and spoke about the government’s recent attempt to create a new copyright exception for text and data mining. Read more about rights related issues and policy here.