#LBF15_Cognizant_Analysis

THEMES
TRENDS
&
SPECULATION
from
The London Book Fair 2015

THEMES TRENDS & SPECULATION from The London Book Fair 2015
CONTENTS
1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 3
2. LBF 2014 ............................................................................................................................................ 5
2.1 Self Publishing – A parallel universe to the world of traditional publishing. ....................................................... 5
2.2 Convergence of the Publishing & Gaming Industry.............................................................................................. 6
2.3 Big Data: The new currency of Publishing............................................................................................................ 7
3. 2015 Trends ....................................................................................................................................... 8
3.1 How much of an opportunity is Big Data for you? ............................................................................................... 9
3.2 How do you manage multiple Delivery Platforms?............................................................................................ 10
3.3 How is the Delivery Channel changing? ............................................................................................................. 11
4. Seminars.......................................................................................................................................... 12
4.1 Adapting Publishing for Mobile Audience.......................................................................................................... 12
4.2 Top Publishing Trends of 2015:.......................................................................................................................... 13
4.3 The ‘Real’ New Publishing .................................................................................................................................. 14
4.4 Social Selling: Why Publishers need to put their books centre stage ................................................................ 15
4.5 Open Access: What’s next? ................................................................................................................................ 15
4.6 From eBooks to smart adaptive content............................................................................................................ 16
5. Social Analysis.................................................................................................................................. 18
5.1 Top stories.......................................................................................................................................................... 18
5.2 Opinion timeline................................................................................................................................................. 19
6. Contributors..................................................................................................................................... 23
Mexico was the market focus at #LBF15.

THEMES TRENDS & SPECULATION for the London Book fair 2015
3
1. INTRODUCTION
The London Book Fair is the unofficial New Year of the publishing calendar. A time to discuss and debate the prior year,
celebrate success and creativity and establish the relationships that will drive the deals and projects for the upcoming
year. This year, the three days of networking, presentations, pitches and drinks had a new home, Olympia, which
seemed to dominate discussion at the event.
Team Earl’s Court Team Olympia
Given the importance of this event to the global publishing community, the Media & Entertainment practice at
Cognizant wanted to record the insights and ideas being exchanged. To accomplish this, a small army of consultants
descended upon Olympia to capture the zeitgeist of #LBF15. This group of industry experts divided up the show across
publishers, vendors, seminars and social data to interview and analyse as much as possible. For those of you that did
attend we hope you can use this as a recap of the things you experienced, while those of you missed the show can
share the outcomes without experiencing the foot pain associated with walking Olympia’s floors.
This year we saw plenty of topics that have been discussed in prior years, such as subscription models and the rise of
self-publishing. We also had some conversations on emerging technologies and how Snapchat, Periscope and the
Internet of Things may impact the industry in coming years.
As we examine 2014, look forward to 2015 and dive into the best social messages from the show, we welcome feedback
and look forward to helping the publishing industry address these challenges and opportunities in the coming year.
David Ingham
Director – Media & Entertainment Consulting
E-mail: David.Ingham@Cognizant.com
Twitter: @dsingham
LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/dsingham
Snapchat: dsingham-mdd
Mobile: 07766608675

4
Did you like the venue?
Steady 27%
Growing73%
What is the future of
self-publishing?
#LBF15 – By The Numbers
Social Media Demographic
42%
25%
25%
8%
63%
31%
6%
Yes
60%
No
40%
Will digital generate more revenue than
print given current maturity levels?

5
2. LBF 2014
At the end of the London Book Fair last year there was some future gazing done about the trends that would dominate
the industry for the remainder of 2014. Before looking forward we wanted to review these and see what came to
fruition and what was just hot air. You can view the original speculation video via the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAy-dasHOdI
2.1 SELF PUBLISHING – A PARALLEL UNIVERSE TO THE WORLD OF TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING.
“[the] Space between traditional and self-publishing will be richer and populated by service providers”
Alison Jones, Palgrave Macmillan
Self-publishing has taken the industry by storm, and the arrival of tools to self-publish books has made the whole
process of book publishing a lot simpler and leaner. Service providers in this sector are more transparent and a whole
new breed of authors is riding this wave. It would be right to say self-publishing has grown to be a parallel universe to
the world of traditional publishing.
Word cloud of a sample set of service providers for self-publishing print &eBooks.
Our universe is governed by the laws of nature. A parallel universe is one where some of these laws can be bent and
others could be broken. In the last five years self-publishing has broken many of the laws of traditional publishing. The
number of vendors and service providers who serve various facets of self-publishing has multiplied. Publishers Global,
a directory for the global publishing industry, lists close to 100 companies across the globe under the heading self-
publishing. While this is a very conservative figure we are sure that these numbers are on the rise.
WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY?
Literary agent Andrew Lownie believes that in 5-10 years, 75% of books will be self-published, 20%
assisted by agents, and only 5% traditionally published. While some of these numbers represent data
only from Amazon’s 120,000 bestselling eBooks, an increase in the trend can be seen from 2014.
With self-publishing gaining respect over the years, traditional publishers see a huge opportunity in
acquiring the rights of books which were initially self-published. Sophie Jackson’s forthcoming trilogy,
A Pound of Flesh, drew more than 4 million reads on Fanfiction.net and 3 major publishing houses
are bidding up for her debut novel. The open forum style of fan fiction helps authors improve on
their work, says first time novelist Anna Todd, “It’s like having 1000 editors at one time”. Lots of
traditional agents and publishers have joined Wattpad after seeing huge success with stories like After by Anna Todd,
which secured a huge advance from Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books imprint. Statistics from Wattpad help both
publishers and studios take better decisions, as it comes with a huge fan base.
The author earnings report for the last 2 quarters had some interesting insights into self-publishing.

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VERDICT – A TREND TO STAY
One of the key trends of London Book Fair 2014, self-publishing, is continuing to develop. While we see a
huge opportunity for self-publishers, a more interesting trend is traditional publishers developing this
capability and acquiring self-published rights. They are using self-publishing to cut down on publishing risk
and cost and to offer authors services and channels that retain talent and revenue. We can expect to see
new service providers and technology partners in 2015 and years to come. You can read more about this
topic in the 2015 trends section.
2.2 CONVERGENCE OF THE PUBLISHING & GAMING INDUSTRY
“Book Publishing and Gaming industry are coming closer together resulting in great interactive
narratives and storytelling”
Bea Longworth from Freed Fiction
As a sign of the increasing synergies between publishing and gaming, LBF launched its first “Gaming Zone” in 2014,
coming out of the Digital Zone which launched in 2008.
Gaming is becoming increasingly recognized as a creative industry. Writing skills from the traditional publishing sector
are becoming increasingly sought after, and inspiration is heading in both directions - Longworth predicted that this
would result in highly interactive narratives, storytelling, apps and games. Is this happening?
 Sherlock: The Network is an interactive game for mobile and tablet, allowing the user to interact with a story
using text, audio and video. It was the #1 paid app in the UK App Store, and has been the #1 entertainment app
in 37 countries, including the US and China.
 A new generation of writers like David Varela and Rhianna Pratchett work across media – from plays to physically
interactive experiences to apps and console Games. Samurai Siege (which generated $20 million in revenue)
and Tomb Raider sold 6 million copies.
 Christopher BrookMyre first novel for orbit BEDLAM will soon be available as a first person shooter based game
developed by Brighton based company Redbedlam.
VERDICT – UNDECIDED
While these are just few examples from the growing collaboration between the two industries,
publishers are looking for new ways to engage with their readers and tell stories. Gamifying their
products is a very powerful way to reach newer and younger audiences. However, several publishers
still view this as a gimmick that will drive short term interest in a specific project, but not long term
change within the industry. Publishers should still consider some level of managed innovation to test out new
technology so as not to fall behind, but be wary of significant investment until customers clearly show an interest in
gamification of content.

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2.3 BIG DATA: THE NEW CURRENCY OF PUBLISHING
2015 will be the year “when Data goes Mainstream”
Alastair Home, Cambridge University Press
Big data is one of the key trends in the media industry, largely driven by customer analytics. However, in publishing,
such analytics have yet to make a major impact. Most publishers have a resource dedicated to ‘customer insights,’ but
the industry still lags behind industries such as retail and banking. How are publishers going to capitalise on the
importance of data, and how it relates to reader relationships?
The Booksellers Association claims that UK publishers sold £2.2 billion of books in 2014, with e-books accounting for
nearly half. The enthusiasm for physical books has not gone down and sales of printed books rose by 3% in the first
quarter of 2015. There is a huge volume of data available in terms of books sold for analysts to look at. However, much
of this data is held by third parties – booksellers and Amazon, and is hard for publishers to access at an individual reader
level. Similarly, where content is delivered electronically, it should be possible for publishers to understand what
content is popular, and which books are completed by readers. But for them to access this data, they need to engage
with the platform owners.
Kobo’s recent article on Publishing in the era of Big Data has many insights:
 Books which have 70% completion rate and have low sales volume are good candidates for marketing &
rebranding to a wider audience. Sustained efforts need to be spent to draw attention to them.
 New authors whose books have a completion rate of 65 to 70% need to be watched as they are the hidden pearls
in the ocean of publishing.
 62% is the industry benchmark for completion of mystery books. When multiple imprints are benchmarked on
openings, completion %, average session length and time spent reading; the insights help publishers to drive
performance, identify and fix trouble spots.
VERDICT – STILL WORK TO BE DONE
Applying Big Data to publishing is in its early stages but we are likely to see an upward trend in terms of
quantifiable insights gained from mining this data. Unlike gaming, data is an area where publishers should
be investing aggressively to gain competitive advantage. While the industry may still lag behind others,
we hope that 2015 will be the year when data goes mainstream.

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3. 2015 TRENDS
It is clear that LBF runs as two shows – a hectic Trade fair where rights are being traded at a high volume, and a more
relaxed non-Trade (STM/ Professional and Education) fair where B2B deals are conducted and publishers meet their
international sales agents. Our team of consultants spread out across all areas of the show and talked with both
publishers and vendors to see what everyone was talking about.
One clear “trend” is that the reports of the death of print publishing have been greatly exaggerated. Print is going
strong. Even that most uncomfortable of publishing formats, the loose-leaf (a ring binder for frequently changing
professional content –
updated pages are replaced on
a subscription basis – basically
a database in paper form) still
persists. And runaway print
successes (such as Capital in
the 21st
Century for Harvard
University Press) still drive
profit and can cause major
logistical issues as the focus
moves to digital. Conferences
sessions addressed this (What
Works Best? Print vs. Digital,
Chair: Graham Taylor) – noting
the difference between
“concentrated reading” –
where the reader is focused
fully on a text, and “ubiquitous
reading” – flicking through content in short form – often on a mobile device. Different formats support different
approaches, and much of the adherence to print is cultural/ psychological. And new print formats continue to appear
– such as the rise of adult colouring books – which held three of the top 5 Amazon best seller positions at the time of
the Fair.
Traditionally publishers have focused on managing publishing and delivery operations. But over the years focus has
shifted more towards relationship management with authors, channel partners and customers. This is evident from
advancements in technology products showcased by IT vendors. Digital publishing has provided publishers with easy
access to new markets globally, requiring them to include new channel partners in their value chain as well as strategies
like printing on demand to monetize long tail content. Ecommerce companies like Flipkart in India, and Dangdang and
JD in China are competing well with established players like Amazon in their respective territories, giving publishers
much needed options of channel partners.
Another key trend we noted with software vendors was that the publishing industry wants to exercise better control
over its channel partners. This will be instrumental in having better relations with customers and for collecting the
customer and content data that is essential for optimizing existing processes. It will also ensure that the right content
is created for the right audience, packaged well and sold effectively. Increased competition amongst publishers in
bagging scripts, signing authors (or attracting successful self-published titles), optimising channel partners, etc. is
creating an increased focus on content rights management. With a multitude of delivery platforms delivering content
in multiple formats across hundreds of territories, managing permissions and rights on content has become challenging.
codeMantra, a technology enabled services company, points to a shift towards publishers moving their content
preparation processes in-house through automation and getting away from outsourcing.
We asked publishers and vendors several questions as we went round the show, and tried to establish what they
thought would be the trends for 2015. The three areas below clearly came across as the key topics people were
discussing for 2015.

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3.1 HOW MUCH OF AN OPPORTUNITY IS BIG DATA FOR YOU?
Big data is creeping into the publishing world. Sales data analytics which was considered critical till last year, is no
longer on top of the publishers’ mind according to solution vendors like Avatar. For publishers, the real value of big
data is understanding customer’s usage patterns - understanding who bought what, which content they accessed, did
they read the content till the end, did a customer lose interest and what other content available in publisher’s
repository might be of interest to the customer.
Publishers View:
Publishers are starting to invest in data analytics as they now realise it is an important tool to build a loyal and engaged
customer base. They realise it is a two part process – first is to understand how customers use content better than they
have done to date which can help them develop better content and take it to the market faster, and secondly to
understand how their customers are buying and interacting with content to ensure that the correct platforms and
channels are used, and to enable
recommendation of content to
customers.
STM/ Professional/ Educational
publishers have been implementing new
solutions around the digital content
supply chain that allow them to leverage
the benefits of content analytics.
Metadata driven publishing initiatives
include adaptive learning which allows
educational publishers to tailor content
to student’s actual learning needs, and
academic publishers are developing rapid
publishing models based on combining
existing content around a current theme.
But the lack of a relationship with the end customer, especially for Trade, acts as a major limitation for publishers as
retail partners like Amazon and Apple control all the customer’s buying and usage information.
Vendors View:
Solution Vendors are bringing advanced analytical capabilities in their solutions that can integrate with the entire IT
eco-system of publishers to provide data analysis across the value chain. While most of the leading solutions like
Klopotek have metadata mapping ability at a granular content level, some of the vendors (like OntoText) are also adding
semantic search capabilities to allow publishers to analyse every piece of content and structure it according to identified
customer segments. Parameters from sentiment analysis can also be included in semantics to structure content based
on a customer’s behavioural analysis.
Analytical platforms can also help publishers in the discoverability of their content by end customers. Trajectory owns
a natural language processing (NLP) platform which processes data and gives publishers rich insights into customer
behaviour (e.g. where are customers losing interest in book). It also enables stronger recommendations, rather than
just relying on keywords.
Companies like Hurix System have integrated analytics solutions and digital content rendering platforms into their core
offering. This allows teachers to run complex analysis to track student’s performance and help students achieve their
learning goals. Other vendors like Libre Digital and Vearsa are focusing on collecting point of sales data to help
publishers get appropriate pricing for their publications, along with user feedback.
Case Study
In the world of Education, the UK government has introduced a new measure “progress 8” designed to encourage schools to offer a broad and
balanced curriculum at Key Stage 4, and reward schools for the teaching of all their pupils. The new measure will be based on students’ progress
measured across eight subjects: English; Mathematics; and 6 others. From 2016, the floor standard will be based on schools’ results on the Progress
8 measure. This means that schools will be focused on tracking data across secondary education to ensure that pupils meet this measure – and
publishers will not only be developing content to teach pupils but the platforms to measure its efficacy.

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3.2 HOW DO YOU MANAGE MULTIPLE DELIVERY PLATFORMS?
The rise of new platforms in publishing is evident. From the advent of digital itself to the rise of mobile, and the sudden
rise and now apparent decline in dedicated ebook readers. How do publishers and vendors respond to such a dynamic
landscape?
Publisher view
It is clear that trends in this area differ between Trade and STM/ Professional/ Education publishers. Almost all the
non-Trade publishers interviewed had a media-neutral publishing approach, publishing across the platforms that
customers demand. Cenveo, a leading product and services provider reiterated that all publishers they work with have
been heavily focused on digital media for years now. While Trade and STM publishers are still comfortable with PDF
and EPUB2 formats, education and magazine publications are increasingly moving into rich media content and EPUB3
formats. Trade publishers are publishing to many of the same platforms, however, they are seeing a decline in the
eReader (Kindle) market – but this is more than offset by customers accessing digital content via tablets and other
mobile devices. It seems that the standard most commonly used is ePUB. The ePUB2 format has already established
itself for digital delivery of content in Trade publishing, but ePUB3 format is slowly gaining prominence. Although, there
is a chicken and egg scenario where investments in enabling technology are waiting for ePUB3 content to be created
whereas publishers are waiting for relevant content consumption platforms to proliferate first before creating
multimedia ePUB3 content. According to Booxtream, this has caused a minor penetration of only 5-10% of EPUB3
format in trade publishing.
Despite the prevalence of standards in publishing content, many non-trade publishers continue to develop their own
delivery platforms.
The number of delivery platforms and access devices/formats have mushroomed and poses a growing challenge around
rights management and piracy. Creating content for multiple platforms is not challenging, but having control over
distribution through these platforms is – including piracy, tracking rights, tracking POS data and getting access to
customer data. For all these functions, the publisher is currently reliant on channel partners. Publishers need integrated
solutions that can provide control and visibility of the entire value chain from content creation to distribution. There is
a strong need for advanced rights management solutions that can ensure optimal revenue recognition for publishers
and authors. This is a challenge because of the different rights and permissions for different regions, platforms and
content type.
Vendor View
Publishers are finding it difficult to control so many channels for digital distribution of books and need advanced
products and services support to track piracy. Booxtream provides DRM watermarking and personalised delivery
platform for ePub books. The eBooks are protected with multiple redundant, traceable, invisible watermarks, and
enhanced with visible, personalised extras like ex libris (bookplate) and personalised chapters. Pay-per-use hosted anti-
piracy solutions are also getting popular for smaller publishers. Digimarc on the other hand, provides solutions and
services to protect author rights and book revenue, using web crawling technology and digital watermarks to trace and
remove pirated content across the internet.
However certain segments like magazines and children’s reference books are witnessing a growth of highly interactive
content with augmented reality features. Magazines are witnessing a decline in sales and hence innovative ways to
engage customers are required. Whereas kids, with access to the latest mobile gadgets, have shorter attention spans
and hence are seeking more excitement even from educational books. Vendors like Zappar are building easy to use,
SaaS platforms for fulfilling needs of small publishers. Interactive features like augmented reality are being introduced
to enhance user engagement, specifically -
 Cross media leverage – providing an easy way to navigate to video links, websites, etc.
 Allowing greater consumption of premium content
 Differentiating from traditional publishing
Case Studies
Many non-trade publishers are launching/pushing new platforms around LBF. Two examples are:
Thomson Reuters has launched the award winning eBooks platform, Proview. It is a platform for delivering textbooks and practitioner content, with
added functionality, running on HTML 5. This platform is used to distribute content to practitioners, enable them to access it across multiple devices,
search, annotate and cross-refer on the fly. It is sold separately, or bundled with the print version.
CUP is launching a new version of its learning platform. This will enable ePortfolio functionality – supporting display of work/ self-assessment/
revision and including some social functionality. All these new functions are being added as a part of the whole solution and upgrading to the full
version will be a cost option.

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3.3 HOW IS THE DELIVERY CHANNEL CHANGING?
Digital is breaking down traditional walls in selling content – Amazon has a presence in almost all countries, and digital
works are not constrained by physical supply chains. Distributors can take product into new markets, and publishers
are selling direct to consumers. What does this mean?
Publisher View
All publishers would like to get closer to their customers. In the non-trade world many sales are direct to consumer,
but increasingly new channels are appearing, and international channel partners and agents are trying to expand their
reach (e.g. by repackaging content through online retailers) causing issues around control of distribution for publishers.
Publishers cannot control their channel partners, especially considering that different channel partners are involved for
different content types, delivery platforms and distribution territories. For STM publishing big channel partners like
Elsevier are totally relied upon by smaller academic publishers (like professional societies). But this prevents these small
players from developing direct relationships with the customers.
Many publishers are altering the way in which they approach customers to better understand their demands, and tailor
content to their requirements.
Vendor view
Firebrand Technologies states that print-on-demand will continue to grow along with traditional publishing.
PrintOnDemandworldwide.com also believes that print-on-demand will grow and challenge traditional publishing
channels. Some key highlights of print-on-demand (POD) are:
 Marginally higher cost of POD printing is offset by no warehousing cost and no loss of inventory in case of
printing errors
 Print quality in POD is now comparable to Digital Printing
 POD being used by all type of publishers – big, indie and self-publishers
 POD firms are now starting to offer next day delivery – as in retail publishing
Small-scale publishers / Indie publishers have created a niche market for themselves and larger companies like Libre
Digital (part of RR Donnelly) are partnering with focused firms like Aptera to tap this market.
Case Study
Hurix Systems offer a digital focused publishing suite KITABOO which allow education publishers/institutions to make their content interactive by
adding rich media like photos, videos, voice overs etc. and publish it across any mobile platform. It also allows institutions to self-brand the rendering
platforms, integrate it to their LMS system and allow teachers to run complex analytics to track progress of the entire class or individual students.
Case Study
Over the last few years John Wiley & Sons has changed the way in which it approaches customers. Rather than going in to secure the adoption of
a textbook, they now seek to understand what lecturer’s issues are, and provide a bespoke solution to their needs. This is supported by Wiley’s
acquisition of Deltak – which provides a cradle to grave student support system for the lecturer/ institution:
Add students => identify content =>add to system => deliver => monitor/ assess
Thus Wiley’s relationships with universities are deeper, and they have greater insight into how students consume their content.
Case Study
PrintonDemandWorldwide.com is an established company that is investing heavily in both print and digital book publishing channels. While its
BookVault platform allows publishers of all sizes to print books on demand and ship to customers globally within 24 hours, its E-Vault platform is
focused on e-books distributions allowing author to convert the PDF files into ePub and Mobi formats. In addition to providing additional value add
services likes language conversion, metadata tagging, sales analytics etc., it also allows authors to co-distribute same content on both print and
digital channels as it believes 70% of e-book readers eventually end up buying print books.

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4. SEMINARS
The seminars at #LBF15 are always a great way to see new product launches and hear about innovative projects going
on at some of the world’s largest publishers. We attended several of the seminars at LBF, and have summarized the
most impactful one’s for you here.
4.1 ADAPTING PUBLISHING FOR MOBILE AUDIENCE
Panel:
 George Walkley – Head of Digital, Hachette, UK
 David Jackson – CEO, Storyjacker
 Fabien Schmitz – CEO, Gayatech
Overview:
“I shall not today attempt further to define [mobile]… But I know it when I see it. Mobile is similar,
you know when you touch it”
Justice Potter Stewart. “Enhanced” by George Walkley
Walkley emphasized the fact that mobile consumers are future consumers, and the vast
majority of our NEW users will come from mobile platforms. Instant access to content, well
designed apps and a good UI experience are absolutely necessary for these users. Publishers
need to adapt to this audience and offer high quality content services to acquire a stake in
the mobile market. Earlier competitors for publishers were just other publishing houses but
now the competition is from all forms of media especially mobile!
Citing statistics from research data, George mentioned that from 1996-2015, 28 billion new
devices were connected to the internet along with 6-7 billion mobile phones. These
internet devices include many apps, some of which pass information back to smart phones,
tailoring content to be more personalized. Getting the mobile experience right will be
absolutely essential as many users are just directly heading to mobile and skipping the
desktop experience.
The seminar also included a short presentation from David Jackson and Fabien Schmitz. David Jackson showcased the
award winning app DipIn, which is a story comparison app. It offers the beginning of two stories for comparison. It
uses analytics to drive ‘Push Discovery’ and advises the user on the best books based on the genres and themes
preferred. This is something to watch as the app has won a lot of awards and is in Beta testing now. It has received a
lot of early funding from the Publishers Association and will be on the lookout for partnerships.
Meanwhile, Fabien Schmitz showcased EDUCLOUD, projecting the ‘School as a Service’ theme. The company intends
to focus on software solutions for education (K-12) on mobile platforms.
Key Takeaways:
The panel agreed on three essential points for modern Publishers to adapt to the mobile audience:
 Structure of content – Content consumption is not limited to just passive consumption so content has to be more
personalized and transactional.
 Partnerships and a collaborative approach – Adopt a collaborative approach, strategize and invest in long term
partnerships to move ahead in the digital world.
 Use data to test assumptions – Use data extensively to test all assumptions and catch hold of issues before they
become harmful.

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4.2 TOP PUBLISHING TRENDS OF 2015:
Speaker
 Steve Odart, CEO & Founder, Ixxus
Overview:
Having worked with a whole range of Publishers across
Education, STM, Trade publishing, Steve highlighted his top 5
Publishing trends for 2015:
1. Shift to Smart Content
Future consumers are fully aware of how they want to consume
information across multiple devices so the focus has to be on
content personalization rather than
just providing information. However, in Publishing, the mindset is still oriented towards the
end product (print).
"There's still a very strong print-focus in editorial, production and authoring - people are
still thinking about the product."
Smart Content is about breaking this end product oriented process and focusing on an agile
and product agnostic path. Content has to be smart from inside, building enriched value
living in the content itself-
“Semantic Enrichment is the key”!
2. Content Discovery, not Content Search
Publishers need to invest in Content Discovery based on Semantic search. Using this to make content suggestions
relevant to the author and to the content, leveraging methodologies like Knowledge Graphs, Semantics and
annotations is essential. We are no longer are in a position just to search content; instead content discovery is becoming
a business changer and has to be provided as a service.
3. Focus on what you’re good at and stick with it!
The hard question for Publishers is how to prioritize things and demonstrate value to the market? Publishers must
identify what we are good at and stick to it. Weaker
areas can be addressed through alliances and
partnerships. Simply put, the approach should be “This
is what we are, this is what we are good at and this is
what we will continue to do”.
4. Partnerships
Organizations need to identify smarter ways to do things differently. Structure partnerships in such a way that they are
beneficial to both parties, creating “Smart, Flexible and Agile Partnerships”.
 Have long term partnerships and develop a roadmap in accordance to needs and vision
 Identify the ROI for the investments made in partnering with organizations
 Align the overall vision of the organizations accordingly
5. Breaking borders
Bring in global workflows, global collaboration and be global digitally. Create a single product which will cater to global
markets and localize it where needed. Needless to say, this will increase the initial operational overheads but you will
reap the benefits.
This session was the most popular talk at the tech
stage in LBF 2015, this session had the audience
continuously tweeting about the trends being
discussed.

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4.3 THE ‘REAL’ NEW PUBLISHING
Panel:
 Katharine Reeve – Course Director for Publishing, Bath Spa University
 Caroline Harris – Co-Founder, Harris & Wilson
 Vince Medeiros – Publisher, TCO London publishing
 Miranda West – Founder/Publisher, The Do Book Company
Overview:
Questioning the trend that print books are in decline, this seminar examined the rise of niche print
publishing.
“A growing trend of the moment is in high quality print books”
Katharine specified that high quality content is specifically in demand in niche areas and it is absolutely required to
identify and cater to demand. New and independent publishers are adopting a path of innovation and creativity to
establish relationships with this segment of readers.
Citing The Do Book Company and brands like Little White Lies, Katharine mentioned that these new publishers are
focusing on creating highly desirable publications, with high quality editorial and design, for
print and digital. For them, digital is not a separate entity but is already embedded into the
publishing ecosystem.
Taking this further, Miranda West spoke about Do Books which produces a series of high
quality print and digital books authored by speakers from Do Lectures. Projecting the “Small
budgets require brave ideas” theme, Miranda highlighted that the idea behind Do Books was
to make the famous and inspiring Do Lectures available to wider audience rather than just
those attending the lectures. Do Books utilized this niche area and made these inspiring ideas
available to everybody in the form of simple concise practical guides which are easy to use.
"Print #books can change lives and inspire people, with a strong brand and strong identity"
@ Miranda West
For Vince, in this age of digital ubiquity, Scarcity = Abundance! According to Vince, within “new” publishing, the trend
is an inclination towards high quality print books. People are playing with a range of approaches –one of the formats
being the high value hardback. The focus is to offer readers a comprehensive satisfying experience with high quality
brand consistency. TCO showcased its main brands - Little Wide Lies, Huck and 71AGallery which exists across multiple
platforms.
Harris and Wilson work closely with authors and publishers to deliver high quality brand led books. With firm belief in
“strategic alliances create more streamlined processes”, their books include Pieminister with Transworld, the Ella’s
Kitchen series for Octopus Publishing Group and Threadless.
Key Takeaways:
Utilize the untapped market – There is a whole new audience segment for these high quality print books which is still
untapped.
No form of media ever fades away – Digital transformation is the trend but print will never disappear. The big publishers
seem to have ignored this market but these young independent publishers are targeting this segment. The focus is to
identify the correct audience and engage them by providing high quality content, maintaining the brand identity on
multiple platforms.
Paul Twelftree, Chief Innovation Officer from Ixxus presented about the ‘5 Steps to Digital Transformation’ in a separate session
 Store – Have one single platform for all content storage
 Discover - #notjustsearch! More processes should be developed that will aid in discovering the right content than just search from a large
pile of random material
 Collaborate - An organization does not have to be good at everything and the underlying gaps can be filled using this powerful mechanism
of collaboration
 Granularize - Building/deriving value out of content by having a granular level of information flowing in from author(s) and other sources.
 Enrich – Content Enrichment has been there for some time but the next step has to be some level of automation for adding semantics into
the content and thus leading to self-assembling of products.
“Product First to Content First and slowly transitioning to Consumer First”
A detailed report is available for download here.

15
4.4 SOCIAL SELLING: WHY PUBLISHERS NEED TO PUT THEIR BOOKS CENTRE STAGE
Speaker
 Gideon Lask, CEO and founder , Buyapowa
Overview:
Having helped brands across sectors, Gideon Lask shared insights on how publishing industry needs to reinvent its
“Reaching the Consumer” strategy.
On an average, 80% of a consumer’s digital time is spent being “social”. This includes emails,
twitter and any other form of social engagement/interaction. Gideon emphasized harnessing
the benefits here which could potentially convert into additional revenue and reduction of
customer acquisition cost.
The arrival of technology and new platforms has further strengthened this social aspect.
“The need is to convert these social interactions into social transactions.”
Speaking about his experience at Universal music, he cited the business model shift at Universal from just “selling to
the fan base” to “getting fans on board”, not just as transactional users. Universal went from being a pure music label
to a multi-channel business, selling fashion, music, memorabilia and tickets to over 10m fans globally.
He also quoted an example from Sky, which is following its “Social Customer-get-Customer” scheme and aims to raise
the penetration of its fan base to around 20% from the current 1%. Gideon named clients like Fox, Disney, Hachette
and Sony as among those which are adopting similar models of social selling.
He emphasized that publishers need to adopt a more direct approach to selling online and should focus on a “Social
Reader get Reader” concept. Using Social commerce, the readers/ super fans can get a chance to engage with authors,
books and characters on a deeper level. Further down the line, these superfans can influence the content as well.
Hachette UK has been involved in running a series of “social selling” campaigns last year across divisions using the
BuyaPow platform. It saw a major uplift in sales and almost 80% new customer acquisition. This platform also allowed
Hachette to gain major consumer insights.
Key Takeaways:
Gideon summarized the following steps for Publishers to adopt the social selling dimension
effectively:
 Gamification – Reward your readers for bringing in other readers with vouchers,
signed copies of favorite authors books etc. Set up Personal targets/mini goals for
these super fans.
 Cocreation – Allow your readers to have a say in the products, get them on board to co-create content.
The key to the future of social selling is to have tools that make it easier to incorporate the above. The social selling
model has to be agile, iterative and moving ahead with each cycle. Gideon rounded up the session with:
“Recognize that Social is a channel and utilize it to make money!”
4.5 OPEN ACCESS: WHAT’S NEXT?
Panel:
 Christopher Kenneally – Director, Business Development, Copyright Clearance Center
 Diane Cogan – Sales Director for the UK and Europe, Ringgold
 Dr Neil Jacobs – Head of Scholarly Communications Support, JISC
 Dr Emma Wilson - Director of Publishing, Journals and Databases, Royal Society of
Chemistry
 David Ross - Executive Publisher for Open Access, SAGE
Overview:
Quoting stats from an industry report, Christopher Kenneally stated that Article Processing
Charges (APC) are expected to grow 80% from 2014 to 2017. This points to the fact that
Open Access business model revenues can be higher than traditional business models.
Agreeing that Open Access is here to stay, Emma Wilson spoke about Royal Society of Chemistry’s shift from a
subscription model to the Open Access model. RSC experimented with the introduction of gold vouchers in 2006, which
helped them understand the needs of the scholarly community much better and eventually led to them making their
flagship journal a gold Open Access publication.
Neil Jacobs from JISC identified the top challenges faced by universities/authors:

16
 Administrative challenges – Compliance requirements from funding agencies become an administrative
overhead for universities. As part of a change in supply chain, Universities are absolutely engaged as they pay
the APC on behalf of authors. Each payment of an APC costs a university around 81 pounds which is an enormous
amount when scaled up. This increases the administrative burden on the supply chain.
 Workflow Challenges – Point of acceptance is very important in the workflow. As of now, no notification is sent
to universities/authors at the point of acceptance; hence the universities do not know when the article is
accepted.
 Lack of clarity around journal policies – Authors and universities do not have a clear view of the mandates and
policies applying in this field.
Meanwhile David Ross, identifies that the struggle is applying Open Access in areas like Social Sciences, Humanities
where there is little funding. Another key issue is change management – teaching the community about Open Access,
and calming their fears about the shift to Open Access.
“Experimentation and innovation should guide publishers when approaching #OpenAccess”
David Ross from SAGE
Stressing the importance of identifiers and standards in Open Access, Diane Cogan holds that the most difficult
challenge is “How we link everything up – author to ORCID, to funder ID and institutions”. For improving the scholarly
supply chain, all relevant information needs to be captured in metadata.
Key Takeaways:
The panel agreed on these essential points for Publishers to adapt to the Open Access model:
 End to End solutions – Identify complete technology solutions and build national level workflows to manage
change and maximize results for Publishers
 Ease administrative burden – Identify
solutions which reduce the administrative
burden on the current supply chain. An
example could be building notifications at the
point of acceptance in workflows
 Have clarity on policies for publishers/ institutions
 Focus on standards and identifiers – Standards, identifiers and national level workflows are key to solving
workflow challenges
 Link Authors, Publishers, funders and institutions – Focus on linking authors, funders, publishers and institutions,
and capture the correct information in metadata
The discussion rounded up with some interesting questions from audiences around the challenges being faced and on
the level of APC. David Ross commented that the APC is a combination of different variables, and the market being
operated in. Publishing an article across all markets is not same, sometimes APC is zero and sometimes it is very high.
The way forward would be a mixed funding model!
The Open Access business model is different from one area to another but the challenges exist across all areas. For
companies to deal with these challenges, we need to focus on workflows.
“Pricing APC is definitely going to be an active area in future”
Emma Wilson
4.6 FROM EBOOKS TO SMART ADAPTIVE CONTENT
Speaker
 Sameer Shariff, CEO & Founder, Impelsys
Summary:
eBooks have come a long way, from being simple PDFs to interactive content supporting
multiple formats and platforms. Digital disruptions across the publishing industry have opened
a portal to unlimited potential and possibilities. This seminar focused on what led to these
changes and what the future of eBooks may look like.
Describing different phases of eBook delivery, Sameer highlighted six key aspects that have
resulted in the rapid evolution of eBooks:
 Content Engineering
 Delivery platforms
 Multiplatform and devices support
 DRM
 Marketing SEO and Social Media
 Analytics (including Big Data)

17
eBooks are now no longer sequentially read texts that have simply been digitized, but now provide rich and interactive
content in a collaborative environment. The future of eBooks lies in the ever evolving areas of:
 Ontologies
 Semantic annotations
 Semantic Content enrichment
 Knowledge graphs
 Adaptive learning supporting Personalized and custom content
 Smart platform delivery
Key Takeaways:
Three big forces which can reshape the eBook Publishing industry are:
 Content Engineering
 Technology
 Data Analytics
eBooks have evolved to a great extent in the digital world, giving rise to the importance of enriched content to enhance
learning experiences. What lies next is very much centred on the digital innovation skillset across the value chain of
people and processes.

18
5. SOCIAL ANALYSIS
In addition to the interviews and desktop research we did for this report, we also used social media analytics tools to
pull social data associated with LBF 15. These tools are capable of identifying the influencers within your network,
sentiment about a product or topic and customer segmentation based on activity, interests and connections. They can
also provide publishers with an invaluable way to monitor their audience without leaving the office.
5.1 TOP STORIES
We first looked at the stories from LBF referenced most often on social media (primarily via Twitter). You can click the
description for a link to the articles.
# Top Stories Retweets Tweets Impressions
1
Guardian’s news article on Diana Athill’s new book Alive, Alive Oh! That
would be published next year and Edna O’Brien’s novel and how these
writers were the stars of the London Book Fair was tweeted and retweeted
highest number of times by the social web users
135 59 5915344
2
A manuscript’s photo was widely shared and was speculated to be the
manuscript for Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” to be published in July,
2015
120 2 1721921
3
Fear of Flying author Erica Jong’s latest book which promises to address
“what it really takes to be human and female in the 21st century” was a
major hit at the London book fair and aroused the interest of a lot of
enthusiastic readers
45 47 4946818
4
Celebrity Conchita Wurst , besides participating in the fair, played a key role
in promoting the London Book Fair
66 2 314284
5
The photo of the China Stand at the London Book Fair featuring a haunting
chronicler of despair which drew comparisons with Kafka, attracted the
attention of many fair visitors
5 36 67270
6
The announcement of European Union Prize for Literature 2015 winners at
London Book Fair was another major attraction of the Fair
31 2 683528

19
5.2 OPINION TIMELINE
In order to analyse how opinions of LBF changed we analysed social interactions before, during and after the show.

20
1. BEFORE THE SHOW
 “Sneak peak from #LBF15, at the amazing Grand Hall,
@Olympia_London. Tuesday is nigh! ” @vivl_io
 “Will be at the London Book Fair for most of next week.
Should be amazing, and will certainly be very big... it's... f”
@ProBookDesigner
 “The awesome David Nicholls takes the first keynote at
#PDMC15.“ @mollyflatt
 “David Nicholls gives a lovely, sensitive appeal for an
'equilibrium' where bookshops and libraries can live
*alongside* innovation #PDMC15” @mollyflatt
 “Superb keynote with @neilhimself from @LondonBookFair”
@livingspiritpix
Top Negative Comments
Conversation Snippets
Top Positive Mentions
 Eminent keynote speakers: A lot of positive sentiments
were seen around Neil Gaiman who had agreed to appear
as the keynote speaker at the PDMC, LBF. Neil is a
pioneering author-he has made himself a digital
phenomenon, with an incredible 1.8 million followers on
Twitter. People also talked of David Alan Nicholls, an English
Novelist, who was a keynote speaker too.
 Grand Venue-Olympia : There was excitement about LBF
being held at the bigger and brighter halls of Olympia,
London
Context of Conversations
 London Book Fair created a fair amount of buzz in the week
preceding the event, with around 50% of mentions on social media
coming from United Kingdom, followed by the United States
 With around 80% content, Twitter emerged as the most popular
social media channel for the event while Facebook had close to 180
mentions
 As far as sentiments are concerned, public was really excited about
the event and looking forward to it with a good deal of positive
mentions across channels
 Though people looked forward to attending the speaker series at the
Publishing for Digital Minds Conference’15 as part of the London
Book fair, a considerable set of mentions were seen hovering
around the buzz that Amazon’s kindle and media sales are dipping.
The pre-event period didn’t see much of a negative sentiment
from the public.1,880
mentions

21
2. DURING THE SHOW
 “How to get into publishing seminar at @LondonBookFair is
so useful! #DataIsTheNewRocknRoll #LBF15” @TikDalton
 “RT @MelanieHoskin @indie_recon thanks @BarbaraFreethy
and@bellaandre for a session that outdid anything I heard
at #LBF15” @bellaandre
 “RT @Bexonfire Inspiring seminar this morning at #LBF15 run
by @clpe1 on the importance of reading for pleasure in
schools. Been on my mind all day!” @charliehacking
 “Insightful #LBF15 seminar on contracts & rights in book to
film/tv adaptations. Thanks to speakers! Finished in time for
lunch in the sun” @constantinmari
 “One exhibitor has definitely got their stand right-first-time
at #LBF15 Great use of
space #hachette2015 http://t.co/OlWUCWPGAk”
@GregMox
 “RT @drewjerrison The stunning @ConchitaWurst adding a
touch of glamour to the fair #LBF15 http://t.co/3bSAt2Zpnx”
@ZohrehjJamaleddi
 Seminars: Social web users talked positively about various
seminars such as “How to get into Publishing”, “Importance
of reading for pleasure in schools”, “Contracts & Rights in
book to film/ TV adoptions”, a seminar on social media
strategies, "fun disables fear; fear impedes ideas“, seminar
on collaboration, “Building the workforce in the future”
 Attractive venue: The huge Hachette stand was applauded
by the fair visitors for its effective utilization of space and
having a roof terrace
 Celebrity connect :The presence of celebrity Conchita
Wurst at the Fair was hailed by social web users
 London Book Fair generated a lot of enthusiasm among social web
users which is evident by close to 6000 mentions of the fair; with
63% of the total mentions coming from women
 Twitter is the most prolific media for the London Book Fair,
accounting for 84% of mentions, while more than 480 mentions
came from Facebook
 In terms of sentiment, the perception around the London Book Fair
2015 on different social media platforms is highly positive with 99%
favorable comments
 Twitter predominantly has people talking about liked/most
anticipated events at the fair, while news mentions were around
popularity of China’s president Xi Jinping’s book: Governance of
China which was unveiled at the fair and its global sales setting a
new record, LBF awards and the unveiling of a Groupon platform for
a Daily Book deal offer
 “#facultyLBF far too small for all the people wanting to
attend! Good sign for scholarly publishing, but bad
planning #LBF15 ” @caketin85
 “So London Book Fair was even more horrible than usual
because it is in a new venue and I couldn't work out
where anything was” @meandmybigmouth
 “Surprised so many publishers' stands at #LBF15 still
focus on print books when they actually offer good
blended delivery of content #DoMore” @GregMox
 “RT @thecreativepenn Lovely to have
a #poetry area #LBF15 ... Shame about the typo
?! http://t.co/Hzrh07zUwA” @stefivos
 “Trouble in the crowd. Shoving and pushing over seats at
Author HQ. Bad form. Very bad form. #LBF15”
@GoldCaro
 Navigation Issues: Although many fair-goers praised the
Olympia venue where the LBF is happening for the first
time since 2005, some others expressed their
dissatisfaction with signage and transportation, stating
that the venue was “hard to navigate”
 Undue focus on Print : Some fair visitors questioned the
undue focus on “print” books by majority of publisher
stands at the fair
5,742
mentions

22
3. POST SHOW ANALYSIS
 “Age shall not weary them: Diana Athill, 97, and Edna
O'Brien, 84, ... #Londonbookfair” @loisetking
 8 Things We Learnt at the 2015 London Book Fair :: Blog ::
Nosy Crow - Blog
 London Book Fair 2015 / Ryland Peters and Small - Ryland
Peters & Small and CICO Books - Blog
 “Lovely photo of this year's brilliant @LondonBookFair, with
our stand looking rather splendid up front! #LBF15”
@HarperCollinsUK
 “@LondonBookFair Thank you. Ali Smith is a star. Such a
generous intelligence.” @carmitstead
 Eminent keynote speakers: Positive mentions kept flowing
in praise of various speakers who appeared at the event.
Public seemed very excited about having got a chance to
listen authors speak live at The London Book Fair’15
 Grand Venue-Olympia : People acknowledged the fact that
the new venue was well lit with natural light and it looked
gorgeous with the glass ceiling
 Creative interiors: The interiors were well appreciated and
the stalls were set up with beautiful backgrounds
 Post London Book Fair, social media saw a steep fall to the order of
50% in the buzz around the event on all popular channels like
Twitter, Facebook, News and blogs
 The venue was liked by visitors but at the same time due to signage
issues, people found it difficult to go around the place
 Most of the conversations were around the keynote speakers who
attended the event
 There were concerns among publishers about the high costs borne
by them for the event
 The PDMC’15 was a big hit with a lot of about it on social media
• Described as “Hectical” : The event was described as
hectical on Twitter by a German editor
• Difficulty in deciphering signage: Visitors faced a great
deal of issues in deciphering the signage at the venue
• Unusually hot weather: People also expressed their
discomfort around the fact that the fair coincide with
unseasonably hot weather
 “My favourite assessment of #LBF15 was from a lovely
German editor who described it as "hectical“
“@IAmBeckish
 The Olympia way | The Bookseller – Blog
 “Like publishing itself, the fair is full of
contradictions, misdirections, dead-ends, and —
particularly so this year — hot air.”
 “The galleries—though not easy to get to—”
 “particularly many children’s publishers who
expressed disappointment about traffic and
signage to their area in the West Hall Upper”
2,321
mentions

23
6. CONTRIBUTORS
Jon Williamson
Jon Williamson has 20 years’ experience in digital publishing at a
senior executive level and as a consultant. Focus has been on
identifying commercial opportunities for digital media, and
developing the mechanisms (both technical and commercial) to
deliver them. He can be reached at
jonathan.williamson@cognizant.com; Twitter:@Jon_Williamson
Gaurav Gupta
Gaurav Gupta is a Consulting Manager with the Media &
Entertainment consulting practice based in London, UK. He
has 10 years of IT industry experience focusing on product
selections, change management, process analysis, content
management, digital supply chains, stakeholder and vendor
management. He can be reached at
Gaurav.Gupta@cognizant.com.
Vibha Naryan
Vibha is a Consultant in the Media & Entertainment practice at
Cognizant, with four years of consulting and business development
experience. Vibha holds an MBA from ISB Hyderabad, India. She
can be reached at Vibha.Naryan@cognizant.com.

24
Uday Kumar Lakkoju
Uday has been working in Media and Entertainment for over 7
years, spread across business consulting, business development,
operations and programming. Areas of specialization include -
Digital Asset Management, Social Media & Analytics, Mobility,
Advertising and Digital transformation. Outside of work he is an
avid book reader and photographer.
Piyush Joshi
Piyush is a Senior Consultant with over 9 years of experience in
IT industry. He has worked with multiple media and
entertainment customers in areas like content management,
royalties, broadcast management systems and finance
processes. Piyush is currently based out of London and can be
contacted on Piyush.Joshi2@Cognizant.com.
Subash Thyagarajan
Subash Thyagarajan is a consultant in the Media and
Entertainment practice of Cognizant with over 10 years of work
experience. He is interested in Big Data, Data Mining, Poetry and
Social Networks. He is based out of London and can be reached at
subash.thyagarajan@cognizant.com, Twitter: @mailsubash.

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