READMAGINE 2023

Readmagine was founded in 2006 and has been held continuously for the past ten years.Two hundred people from more than 20 countries discussed over three days about innovation in the world of books and reading, from the perspective of training and talent retention requirements.

This edition was completed with a forum dedicated to accessibility and another focused on sustainability in the value chain.

The organisers—FGSR, FANDE, and IPDA—typically dedicate each edition of the event to a specific topic or focus on a current challenge. In the 2023 edition, the general focus was on the training of book sector professionals: necessary skills and attracting and retaining talent for the industry.

The first day was opened by Enrico Turrin, Deputy Director of the European Publishers Federation, who presented the latest data on the performance of the book market in 2022 at Readmagine. He also offered some projections for the evolution of European countries’ markets in 2023, using figures from the first four months of the year as a reference.

Matt Locke, founder and director of Storythings, presented at Readmagine the conclusions of a report his company developed on the new behavioral patterns of young audiences when using social media. This qualitative research provides very interesting and useful conclusions for anyone who publishes or sells content for young people, because the way they behave on social platforms influences their «predispositions» toward creative content of any kind.

Shauna Moran, a trend analyst at Global Web Index—a consultant who contributes annually to Readmagine—gave a presentation on current trends in media consumption among members of Generation Z. The conclusions shared with the Readmagine community are supported by very robust tracking data on global digital consumption.

Christoph Bläsi, professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, presented an overview of the applications of Artificial Intelligence in the publishing industry at Readmagine.

On the first day of Readmagine 2023, Javier Celaya—CEO of DosDoce and a long-time contributor to Readmagine across its various editions—opened the audio session by citing a fact published by the Audio Publishers Association, which speaks volumes about the importance of audio to the book industry: For the past eleven years, its worldwide sales have been growing by double digits. To this figure, Celaya added in his presentation that in the case of the Spanish market, which began later, there has been 50% annual growth over the past five years.

Skills and attracting talent for the book industry were «cross-cutting themes» throughout most of the sessions at Readmagine 23.

Luis González (FGSR) led a discussion with María José Gálvez (Spanish Ministry of Culture), Christoph Bläsi (University of Mainz), and Porter Anderson (Publishing Perspectives) in which they discussed training challenges for the industry and offered their opinions on ideas to consider in the coming years.

Another of the first interventions was given by Porter Anderson, director of Publishing Perspectives magazine, who read a text dedicated to the skills of the book sector and the importance of striving to understand post-pandemic trends, emerging challenges, and how useful it can be to explore the skills of other sectors to innovate the book industry and adapt to new societal demands.

For the Germán Sánchez Ruipérez Foundation, these approaches are transcendental for several reasons. First, they are directly linked to the mission that Readmagine has endowed itself with since its founding in 2006: to import ideas and skills from other fields, with the aim of sparking innovation in the book industry and the world of reading. And, secondly, they reinforce the foundation’s current focus on the Spanish book school project: PARIX.

Another topic discussed can be summarized in the following question: What will happen in the publishing industry five to ten years from now? In this regard, Santos Palazzi (Grupo Planeta) structured the conversation with Chantal Restivo-Alessi (Harper Collins) and Marie-Pierre Sangouard (Editis) in a very organized manner, and the responses from both editors can be followed in the full recording of the session published here. In this way, the session managed to overcome the challenge posed and become a very useful source of ideas and inspiration for the audience.

Rüdiger Wischenbart was one of the speakers at Readmagine 23, as has been the case for many years. During this edition of the conference, he shared some of his insights about the shifts in the markets.