Mark Thornton

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Mark Thornton is the Senior Partnership Manager for Bookshop.org in the UK. Having founded the award-winning Mostly Books in 2006, he was an independent bookseller for 11 years and a bookshop mentor with the Unwin Charitable Trust before joining Bookshop.org in 2020 as part of the UK launch team. His role involves looking after the more than 550 independent bookshops on the platform, helping develop bookseller online sales and digital skills, and building key partnerships in other bookselling areas, including children’s books.

Raúl Pérez

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Raúl Pérez has worked in media-related industries for over 20 years in companies like RBA, El País and CNN+. In 2011 Raúl Joined Grupo Planeta´s Publishing Division. As Digital Transformation Manager (Office of the CEO), Raúl was charged in 2013 of defining and coordinating a corporate digital strategy among all BUs. In 2016 he moved to an intrapreneur role and in 2018 was charged by the CEO to build Planeta´s Corporate Venture Capital Unit. Raúl rejoined the Publishing Division in 2019 and was appointed Managing Director of Nubico in 2020.

Currently, Raúl is Head of Digital of Planeta´s Publishing Division.

Raúl has completed studies in Management (IESE, Esade), Economics (Pompeu Fabra University) and Journalism (El País-UAM).

Marcelo Gioia

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Marcelo is a book professional with a background in Marketing. He holds a degree in Marketing Administration at ESPM (Superior School of Marketing and Advertising) in São Paulo and a MBA degree at FGV – Getulio Vargas Foundation.

He has worked for a number of publishing houses, in various areas and departments, and since 2009 he has been an evangelist for books in digital formats. He was responsible for the first Brazilian e-reading platform and since 2012 has been acting as Managing Director of Bookwire in Brazil, an aggregator of ebooks, audiobooks and Print on Demand services.

Currently is a participant member of the Innovation & Tech Comittee at CBL – Brazilian Book Chamber.

Madeline McIntosh

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Madeline McIntosh is the co-founder, CEO and Publisher of Authors Equity (www.authorsequity.com), a recently-launched US-based publisher dedicated to reshaping the relationship between author and publisher. She is known for her work as a digital pioneer, having played a seminal role in each of the major inflection points in the consumer book market over the past three decades, including ecommerce, digital audio, and ebooks. Prior to founding her new company, Madeline was the CEO of Penguin Random House in the US. She currently serves on the boards of Simon & Schuster and the US-based nonprofit, Poets & Writers.

Javier del Puerto

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Javier del Puerto is a Senior Account Manager at Bookwire EMEA. Based in London, he partners with top publishers like Bloomsbury, Faber & Faber, and Saga Egmont across Europe and the Middle East. He spearheaded successful NFT launches for Planeta and PRH Spain and actively advocates for AI-powered innovation in publishing. With a background in IT and e-commerce honed in a decade living in China, he brings tech-savvy strategy to the world of digital publishing.

Piero Crocenzi

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Piero Crocenzi (Avezzano, February 12, 1979).

During his studies in Management Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin, he became a member of the Associazione Universitaria JEToP. In this context, he took his first steps in event organization by creating Carriera & Futuro, the career day of the Polytechnic University of Turin.

In 2002, he was called by the Fondazione per il Libro, la Musica e la Cultura  to organize Mestieri in Mostra – the Salon of Professional Opportunities, a collaboration that continued as the head of the Technical Office of the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino from 2007 to 2019.

In 2006, along with Silvio Viale and Barbara Carena, he founded Eventi 3 srl, a company specialized in organizing trade fairs and conferences, currently active in Italy and abroad with dozens of events organized and held every year, employing more than 20 people.

Since 2006, he has been in charge of the technical office of the Fiera della Piccola e Media editorial di Roma, Più libri più liberi, which is held at the Nuvola Eur Convention Center.

For ten years, from 2008 to 2018, he was the Head of the Technical Office of Terra Madre, Salone Internazionale del Gusto, and some Slow Food events such as Cheese and Slow Fish.

In 2018, following the liquidation of the Fondazione per il Libro, la Musica e la Cultura, he became a member of the Associazione Torino, la città del libro.

The Association won the auction for the brand of the Turin International Book Fair and became its owner.

From 2019 to the present, he has held the role of CEO of Salone Libro srl, a company that organizes, markets, and communicates the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino on behalf of the Association.

Piero Crocenzi is passionate about natural wines: from this interest, two projects were born, C’era una voltaand Augusta, natural wine fairs in Italy that welcome dozens of producers from all over Europe every year.

Sakari Luovio

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Sakari Luovio is Chief Sales Officer at Adlibris.com since 2016, the market leading online-bookseller in the Nordics with strong presence also in brick & mortar. Before Adlibris Sakari was Head of Sales in the Nordics at Canadian publishing house Harlequin Enterprises and between the jobs within the book industry he was responsible for the sales in Nordics at Warner Bros for few years. He is also a Vice Chairman in the Booksellers Association of Finland since 2019, with the agenda to improve the business environment of Finnish bookstores and their interests. At Adlibris Sakari has set the commercial omnichannel strategy where the book is in the very center of it supported by the nonbooks-categories together with a data driven customer-obsessed organization. Sakari has a deep understanding of the dynamics of the book industry in the Nordics and in customer and monetary value drivers within ecommerce. Sakari has learning as his key personal driver – continuously learning how to optimize the omnichannel customer experience that converts to maximal sales.

Marta Martínez

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Marta Martínez, the CEO of Grupo Anaya / Hachette for Spain and Latin America since 2020, graduated in Business Administration from St. Louis University, Missouri, and holds a Master’s Degree from the Instituto de Empresa.

With over 30 years of professional experience, she has worked across various sectors, including media, internet, and telecommunications. For the past 15 years, her focus has been on education and publishing, both in European and Latin American markets, where she has led business and digital transformation initiatives in Macmillan Education and Grupo Anaya.

Additionally, Marta Martínez is a member of the Education Publishing Association Board in Spain and serves on the Hachette Livre International Executive Board.

Marifé Boix

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Marifé Boix García is Vice President for Southern Europe and Latin America at Frankfurter Buchmesse GmbH. Since 2012, she organises the CONTEC conferences in different Latin American countries, a meeting between publishing and innovation professionals. She is also responsible for the Frankfurt Invitation Programme. Further she represents the Frankfurter Buchmesse in the EU project Aldus Up, which consists of a network of European Bookfairs. She was in charge of the Catalan Culture as guest of honor in 2007, Argentina in 2010, Brazil in 2013, Spain in 2022 and she works now towards the guest of honor Chile in 2027.

Juergen Boos

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Juergen Boos trained as a publisher at Herder Verlag (Freiburg) in the early 1980s and has degrees in both Marketing and Organisational Theory. He has held management positions at Droemer Knaur Verlag (Munich), Carl Hanser Verlag (Munich), as well as Springer Science and Business Media (today Springer Science) and John Wiley & Sons (Weinheim). He became President and CEO of the Frankfurter Buchmesse GmbH (Frankfurt Book Fair) in 2005 and is President of LITPROM (Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature) and Managing Director of LitCam (Frankfurter Buchmesse Literacy Campaign).

On 20 November 2013, he was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. In January 2017, Juergen Boos received an honorary degree from the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. In February 2018, he was conferred the cultural distinction of “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres“(Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) at the French embassy in Berlin. Furthermore, he is holder of the Spanish Order Isabel la Católica, Encomienda de Numero since October 2022 and of the Ribbon of Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit since February 2023. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of Sheikh Zayed Book Award and a member of Akademie Deutscher Buchpreis (German Book Prize Academy).