Publicon 2017 focused on important issues in publishing

FICCI organized PubliCon 2017 on December 1, 2017 at FICCI, New Delhi. The programme was dedicated to enable publishing sector by facilitating effective dialogue and debate over policy issues, copyright issues, strategies for content monetization across platforms, international business tie ups,emerging marketing trends through content and digital marketing, and engaging upcoming talent with publishers to build career in publishing.

Dependra Pathak, special commissioner (Traffic), Delhi Police while delivering his keynote address highlighted the role of publishers in engaging young minds for maintaining social orderliness. He urged FICCI to collaborate with Delhi Police in engaging publishersto create material in form of cartoon and comics to educate people on road safety, traffic rules and also on safety of women, senior citizens and children. He suggested that FICCI could consider formation of a working group on devising possible measures towards curbing crime and making our society a much better place to live in.

Baldeo Bhai Sharma, chairman, NBT, Govt. of India in his Keynote Address said that knowledge economy is beneficial for development and societal change at large as it could change the mindset of the people. He emphasized on the role of publishers, as a medium of awareness, for a crime free society. He further urged FICCI to create similar platform for Hindi language publishing so that the message could reach to larger population and could be adopted by common people.

Panel discussions…

The programme had various panel discussions engaging distinguished speakers to discuss possibilities for the publishing sector. Apart from panel discussion renowned authors Surender Mohan Pathak and Christopher C Doyle delivered the keynote addresses.

Surender Mohan Pathak outlined the role of pulp paper publishing played in 50’s & 60’s in popularising Indian literary work, especially Hindi language books, among masses. He said that Hindi language publication could reach to common man and became a part of all strata of the society because of the economics of scale provided by pulp. While talking about the bright future of the English language pulp fiction, he shared his concerns towards diminishing Hindi language publishing due to decreasing readership and number of publishers and authors.

In his theme address Ratnesh Jha, co-chair, FICCI Publishing Committee and MD, Cambridge University Press briefed the audience about the progress made by the FICCI publishing Committee in terms of its contribution in creation of Knowledge economy. He stressed on Copyright playing an important role in knowledge economy. He expressed his concerns towards impact of changed Tax regime after implementation of GST on publishing value chain. He urged all the stakeholders to come forward and create value for publishing industry and society at large under the aegis of FICCI.

The programme was designed to address the policy and copyright concerns and bringing partnership opportunities for the industry. On the sidelines of B-2-B sessions for industry, there were workshops organized for mass communication scholars on building the career in publishing sector.

The session on copyright was chaired by Rajiv Aggarwal, joint secretary, DIPP, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, where various aspects of copyright including the strategies to increase copyright awareness was discussed.

The session on content monetization included panelists from creative and media industry, where panelists discussed changing content consumption patterns and ways to monetize the content through TV, web, films, animation, games and L&M.

While, session on Marketing beyond Picturesque Cover & Catchy Blurb witnessed marketing heads of top publishing companies, where they discussed evolving marketing trends, customer engagement strategies, and power of data analytics.

The event was attended by over 300 delegates from various Government agencies, CEOs from publishing, authors, illustrators, publishing service providers, marketing managers, and aspiring publishing professionals from top educational institutes.