A potpourri of publishing trends!

Globalocal is perfect platform for publishing fraternity to get engaged in focused interactions, targeted conversations, topical workshops, experts’ discussions and more. This year too, it was a great event with concentrated mix of business outreach avenues and a chance to meet global publishing professionals. In 2015, with more than 150 participants, GLOBALOCAL offered a concentrated mix of power panel discussions, rights & licenses training, workshops, experts’ tables, business matchmakings, keynote presentations with ample networking breaks. The latest addition, this year, was the Experience Zone which added a much needed dimension of direct display and branding opportunity to the event. Impelsys Inc showcased its digital offerings in their exclusive Experience Zone. With all of this in one place, GLOBALOCAL turned out to be the multi-format event where participants met peers & professionals, scoped out new business partners, presented products/ ideas, exchanged/update knowledge, and interacted with national & international industry experts.

This year, GLOBALOCAL was the stage for 10 different publishing nations of the world to come together and interact with key industry players from India, be it publishers, printers, digital solution providers, or distributors/booksellers. Publishing professionals from Germany (also part of the Exclusive India Trip), Singapore, Malaysia, and France, Italy, Russia, Israel, Spain, US, and UK joined in at GLOBALOCAL, and brought in their own contextual insights into this event which brought together local experience with global expertise. The Business Matchmaking, a format imported from the Frankfurt Book Fair, was tailored to match the business interests of participating companies in a concise and targeted way and took place in a planned but busy way keeping the participants constantly on their toes.

Carrying forward a business-positive tone, the two Power Panels – CEO’s and Academic Publishing, with carefully selected panelists, from India and abroad, addressed relevant trends, discussed them in-depth, while remaining true to the book trade and its topical concerns. The CEOs Power Panel had the theme Upward Curve in Publishing and comprised of Himanshu Gupta (S. Chand), Vivek R (Flipkart), Emma House (The Publishers Association UK), Manuel Carcassonne (Les Editions Stock), Karthika VK (HarperCollins India) & Smita Jha (PwC). The Academic Publishing Power Panel had the theme Higher Education in the New Age & panelists comprised of Sugata Ghosh (Oxford University Press India), Ramesh Gaur (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Vivek Mehra (Sage Publications), Michael Healy (Copyright Clearance Center USA), Nitasha Devasar (Taylor & Francis India) & Sesh Seshadri (Lonely Planet).

Over the two days, there were captivating and insightful keynote addresses. Four in total, the first was delivered by Irina Prokhorova who talked about the publishing scenario in Russia. The second was delivered by Sameer Shariff, CEO of Impelsys Inc, who focused on the future of the e-book delivery. The next keynote was scheduled for the second day which was delivered by Phillip Tatham of Monsoon Books who gave the audience seven key points to know about the south-east Asian market. The last keynote was delivered by Amit Rotbard, a publisher from Israel.

The four different workshops were hands-on sessions led by national and A potpourri of publishing trends! Globalocal is perfect platform for publishing fraternity to get engaged in focused interactions, targeted conversations, topical workshops, experts’ discussions and more. This year too, it was a great event with concentrated mix of business outreach avenues and a chance to meet global publishing professionals. international area experts and brought to the event an aspect of trainings and skill development. Workshops on Marketing for the Future (led by Ananth Padmanabhan & Sebastian Posth), Rethinking Strategy & Monetization (led by R Sriram & Ronald Schild), Rights & Licenses in the Age of Transmedia (led by Renate Reichstein & Manasi Subramaniam) looked at publishing in the digital age, bringing in the latest knowhow to the fore, while addressing the participants’ concerns directly. The fourth Workshop, novel in theme, focused on reenergizing the brick & mortar bookshop (led by Anuj Bahri & Pankaj Singh) and was led by owners of independent bookshops which have stood the test of time.

Following the workshops there were Idea Incubator sessions, one on each day, to create a warehouse of practical ideas which could prove to be the next industry breakthroughs. The Idea Incubator on the first day was titled New Formats in Publishing and was held in collaboration with Yoda Press. The second day had an Idea Incubator based on visualization and entrepreneurial skills titles Future of the Book.

Continuing in its aim to replicate a mini rights fair, GLOBALOCAL sustains its afterlife through the Online Catalogue, a digital directory that houses a consolidated list of all the participants, detailing their profiles and contact information along with a list of selected titles (only in the case of publishing houses). This downloadable directory can also be used for further communication between the event participants.

In essence, GLOBALOCAL was again a one-of-its-kind networking and training focused event for the book trade fraternity of India which also happens to be the meeting ground for global and local publishing professionals, placed right before the retailoriented New Delhi World Book Fair.