The evening of the last day of the fair left the audience and the exhibitors in a mild nostalgia, but the memories of the event will linger on for a few weeks, whereas the tempo set by the London Book Fair 2019 will drive the pulse of the global publishing and media for the year that will follow. Reports like Nielsen Book UK’s about the U.K. print market growing 3% in 2018 from the previous year have set a positive tone for the industry. The 48th edition of the fair was a massive international success with over 25,000 people visiting from across 135 countries.

Brexit was looming large over the fair, authors and publishers voiced their concerns and frustrations, but many said the political uncertainty was not affecting business in a major way—at least not yet. However, the uncertainty of Brexit has heightened concerns that U.K. publishers could lose some of their European export market, potentially prompting more agents to seek world English rights deals with American publishers.

For a second year in a row, digital audio was a hot topic at the fair, with a panel of publishers at a standing-room-only session on the fair’s opening morning suggesting that the growth of the format shows no sign of slowing down. “For the past six years, we’ve seen double-digit growth in both dollars and units,” said Michele Cobb, executive director of the U.S. Audio Publishers Association, adding that in 2017, dollar growth for audio outstripped unit growth for the first time.

Caryl Phillips, Seno Gumira Ajidarma of Indonesia, and Holly Bourne were the authors of the day at the fair, along with three prominent European authors featured as special guests on Tuesday, 12th March: Germany’s Simone Buchholz, Belgium’s Stefan Hertmans, and France’s Antoine Laurain. Seno Gumira Ajidarma, the Indonesian Author of the Day, and well-known advocate of freedom of publication, expressed that the Indonesian people want to know more, and this is delivered by books. The Trailblazer Awards, created to celebrate the next generation of the UK publishing industry those ‘roaring through their 20s were given to the following young writers: Hena Bryan of Bryan House Publishing; Leena Normington of Vintage; Nicola Chang of The Good Literary Agency; Sabby Kaur of Emerald Publishing; and Salma Ibrahim of Literary Natives.

The ever-popular LBF Monday conference, Quantum, took place on 11 March this year. A global conference, with speakers and attendees hailing from over 25 different nations, the programme encompasses the pressing publishing challenges, opportunities, good practices, and the state of the global publishing scene. This year, the theme was ‘Aligned Creativity: Informed by Insight’.

In one of the speaking seminars at the London Book Fair 2019, Impelsys’ EVP and Head of EMEA/ APAC, Stefan Kendzierskyj, spoke on ‘Effective Knowledge Management and Digital Transformation Strategies powered by iPC Scholar’. The talk will highlight some key aspects of the best digital publishing platform with powerful insights on knowledge management and digital strategy. The seminar was well attended.

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For Impelsys, LBF 2019 was a significant event. The flagship platform iPC Scholar (Now mon’k), a necessary innovation for publishers of STM and trade content, drew a great deal of interest among scholarly & academic publishers from around the world. Booth 3A48 of Impelsys was one of the busiest ones with over a couple of hundred footfalls and dozens of meetings bearing prospects of business associations in the near future.

Thank you!

We want to thank the organizers and everyone involved in the fair. Special thanks and welcome to those who visited our booth and the speaking session. We also thank our partners and old friends, with whom we have been taking great strides in the journey of spreading knowledge with technology. For publishers who see value in our products and services and want to implement the same in their business, we welcome and assure them of the best results.