Frankfurt Book Fair 2016: the Commonwealth on how digital is driving change in publishing

17 October 2016
News

This week members of the Publications Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat will be in attendance at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the global publishing industry’s largest trade fair.

This week members of the Publications Section of the Commonwealth Secretariat will attend the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF),  the global publishing industry’s largest trade fair.

The Fair will host representatives from the publishing sections of intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) including, the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and International Monetary Fund.

The Secretariat will be taking part in a collaborative half-day workshop entitled ‘How digital is driving change in publishing at IGOs’. The seminar will explore ways of building on recent advances in IGO publishing such as last year’s successful launch of the Commonwealth iLibrary, a digital research repository of Secretariat publications, developed in partnership with the OECD.

Held in the Frankfurt Trade Fair grounds in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, FBF is an international event that attracts over 7,100 exhibitors from more than 100 countries, and around 275,000 visitors. It presents a marketplace for rights negotiation, distribution and sales, and marketing deals. With over 4,000 seminars, panel discussions and talks, the event also provides opportunities for publishers to explore, understand and capitalise on the innovations shaping the publishing world of the future.

The Secretariat’s team will be exhibiting new and forthcoming titles in the STM and Academic Publishing Hall (Stand K78, Hall 4.2) alongside publishers that include Wiley, Springer Nature, and Taylor & Francis.

The FBF follows this year’s London Book Fair, where key outcomes for the Secretariat included deals made with a new US distributor and a US-based print on demand supplier, which will improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of dissemination of titles in the USA, and a publishing technology supplier, briefing them on the development requirements for a new editorial and production project management system, which will greatly streamline the internal publishing process.