Category: Sustainability

AI, Conferences, London Book Fair, Sustainability, Trends in Publishing

London Book Fair 2023

Gold Leaf

This year’s London Book Fair took place between 18th and 20th April at Olympia (still my favourite venue of the four I have experienced). Annika and I attended on the first and second days.

We agreed it was one of the most enjoyable and productive LBFs we have been to for several years. It had much more of a buzz than last year’s rather limp, Covid-dominated experience, (which was not improved by periodic musical disruptions from the host country). Under the new director, Gareth Rapley, LBF 2023 seemed to achieve a much better balance between business conducted on the stands / in the rights centre and events than in the several pre-Covid years that culminated with the 2019 fair, when there were so many events taking place that there was barely time to engage in ordinary conversations, let alone negotiate. The rights centre, at which 500 publishers took tables – there wasn’t a spare space anywhere – was particularly vibrant and busy.

Ukraine was this year’s host country. During the course of the fair, Ukrainian publishers, led by Oleksandra Koval, Director of the Ukrainian Book Institute, issued several heartfelt pleas to UK and international publishers to continue to support Ukraine by blocking deals with Russian publishers. Apparently there has been some slippages since last year.

Several academic publishers chose not to pay for stands this year, presumably because LBF 2022 didn’t work very well for them, though most still took tables in the rights centre; and it was noticeable that others (both academic and trade) either paid for smaller stands or compromised by securing their place on one of the co-operative stands. Such moves are perhaps to be applauded in a post-Covid industry that now rates sustainability above ostentation.

To be sustainable implies many things, however, and maybe still first among these is the traditional definition of sustainability meaning ‘to be economically viable’.  Several high-profile talks were devoted to the fact that, in real terms, the price of books (which has changed very little in the last ten years) is much lower than it was in 2002 or 2012, because the industry has not believed itself to be robust enough to keep up with inflation. This has had a serious knock-on effect on booksellers and wholesalers (both operating in low-margin industries) as well as publishers themselves. There are signs now that we are managing to loosen the grip of austerity and that book prices are rising modestly, though there is still quite a lot of ground to make up.

Discussions about AI and ChatGPT were prominent, whether at the formal events, informally or covered in the free trade ‘show dailies’ (the Publishers Weekly dailies were excellent for their substance this year, The Bookseller ones also lively but rather more chatty in nature). Various experiments have been conducted by industry luminaries who have concluded that ChatGPT can’t write a sequel to The Waste Land (surprise, surprise) or a decent book review, but would be very useful to a lazy student wishing to churn out an assignment to meet a deadline. Academic publishers, take note! The Charles Clark lecture (which will be covered in more detail in a further post tomorrow) also focused on AI.

To return to sustainability, but now focusing on its more modern incarnation of observing a set of measures designed to preserve the planet and respect human rights – it was the subject of several extremely well-attended seminars during the course of the fair. The one Annika and I attended was presented by Susan Pinkney and Alice Wood, from the Publishers Association, who described the PA’s Carbon Calculator, a tool designed to aid all sectors of the publishing industry in monitoring their carbon footprints. The Calculator can be applied to areas of publishing activity as diverse as travel, materials, packaging, production and distribution. Every publisher who takes advantage of the Calculator can use it to keep a record of their own carbon footprint and monitor improvements. Although only employees of that publisher will be able to contribute, add to and examine their own records, the PA is hoping eventually also to use the Calculator as a benchmarking tool across the industry.

Famous authors and exciting new books were, as always, much in evidence. Granta was doing well with Birnam Wood, the new Eleanor Catton novel; Kathleen Rundell merited a huge book display; Ken Follett and Klaus Flugge were feted for their lifetime achievements; and Dapo Adeola and Ann Cleeves were among the authors of the day.

All in all, it was an excellent fair. Did we have any grouses? The cloakroom system left something to be desired; and there were fewer food outlets than usual (come back, Pizza Express, all is forgiven!). However, in an industry where plain living rarely eclipses high thinking, perhaps in these times of too-low prices and the struggle for sustainable ethics, a little privation was good for us!

[written by Linda Bennett]

Conferences, Covid-19, General, Students, Sustainability

Belated New Year’s Greetings!

Gold Leaf

Happy 2022 from Gold Leaf!  We apologise for not having sent our new year’s greetings sooner.

We are not offering excuses for being so tardy, but if we were, we could claim that we have been waiting to get more of a grip on the lie of the land as the new year swings into gear (apologies for the mixed metaphors!).  What do we think 2022 will bring to academic publishing?

Here are a few predictions, some questions and some personal hopes.

Predictions

  • Covid and ways of working. Despite all the ifs and buts, the travelling a few steps forwards in 2021 only to fall many paces back and all the prophecies of the soothsayers of doom, we think 2022 will see a return to a greater semblance of ‘normality’ than we have ‘enjoyed’ since the first lockdown in early spring 2020. This is likely to mean more travelling and more face-to-face meetings for all of us. However, we predict that the virtual meeting is now part of the ecology of academic publishing and is here to stay, though hopefully in lower and less enforced doses.
  • Sustainability. The last point leads directly to something that is hardly a prediction: the need to keep on developing strategies that deliver environmental sustainability. The concept of sustainability has firmly stamped its mark on publishing as much as every other industry. It’s a huge subject, but specifics for us are likely to include more targeted travel; paying greater attention to expenditure on energy; using only FSC paper and other sustainable raw materials; deploying local suppliers wherever possible; and continuing to innovate by developing user-friendly electronic products (though comparisons made between the carbon footprint of these and more traditional products may sometimes yield disappointing results).
  • Open Access. Another huge subject. Burning issues include the anticipation and fulfilment of research funders’ next moves; greater commitment to OA for books and how to achieve a sustainable business model to make it work; and how to publish ‘non-book content’ in fully OA journals.

Some questions

  • Events. What will happen to book fairs, conferences and other mass industry gatherings? We think these will probably survive, but in a less flashy (and lucrative for the organisers) way. Pre-2020, book fairs increasingly turned into events to deliver large numbers of eclectic, expensive seminars. It was the tail wagging the dog. Should book fairs become truer to their original raison d’être, i.e., used primarily to facilitate meetings between people from different parts of the industry and different countries for the discussion of business and closing of deals? Some of this can be done remotely – the fairs are likely to be smaller than in the past – and some of it can’t. Likewise, should conferences be shorter, fewer in number and more co-ordinated: should they be be organised for specific groups of people to share and explore information about genuine topics of interest, not hi-jacked by exhibitions to showcase materials, spawn costly dinners that cause the organisers to eke out the programme for an extra superfluous day, etc.?
  • Undergraduates. Have the experiences of the last two years, combined with the continuing withdrawal of government support for non-STEM subjects and fluctuations in the job market, disillusioned young people to the point where they no longer want to commit the time and expense to gaining a degree? Will those undergraduate courses that survive change completely in nature and become almost solely vocational? And are government measures to make universities more accountable and their teaching achievements more measurable truly aiding the quality of higher education delivery or stifling it?
  • Partnerships. Post-OA, post-‘transformative agreements’, post accelerated delivery of completely online or hybrid courses, what kinds of partnership do publishers need to forge with universities and what are the barriers to success? Where do we draw the line between ‘them’ and ‘us’?

Some personal hopes

  • Meetings. At Gold Leaf, we very much hope to be able to meet all our clients and the many friends who support us during 2022. We celebrated our 20th birthday in 2021. It was necessarily a low-key affair. We hope to be able to celebrate person-to-person with all of you during the course of this year.
  • Success, happiness and above all health for all our readers. It’s a big wish – we’ll need to be in the Good Fairy’s good books to achieve it. But we do mean it most sincerely. We hope this year will be the best ever yet for you, both personally and professionally. No one will be more excited to hear of your successes and more genuinely pleased than we shall.

Please keep in touch with us and let us know how things are going!

Warmest best wishes,

Annika and Linda

Case Studies, Sustainability, Trends in Publishing

A holistic approach to sustainability – Oekom Verlag

Gold Leaf

Oekom is the German “publishing house for Ecological Communication”;  it was founded in 1989 and has made the topics of ecology and sustainability its focus ever since. Originally it published the journal “politische ökologie” (“political ecology”) and has built on this to become a publisher of 12 journals and approx. 70 other publications annually. The company defines itself as a “Social Entrepreneur” and employee participation, flexible working and staff wellbeing have been at the centre of its philosophy from the outset. Ecology has always been an important factor in the day-to-day running of the company; recycled paper has always been used for office communication; and for many years only food from sustainable sources has been served to staff and visitors. Oekom exclusively uses sustainable products from specialised suppliers. Anke Oxenfarth, Head of Sustainability and editor in chief for “politische ökologie” says: “If you work for Oekom, sustainability is surrounding you all the time: from the ink in pens and toilet paper to the electricity used in offices and for servers; everything is sourced sustainably. When we travel for business, we only travel by rail, even for distances over 500 km. All new members of staff have a sustainability induction when they start working for us, so the approach is completely integral to all company policies.”

Despite this philosophy, Oekom soon recognised that a more strategic approach to sustainability was needed to make improvements to products and the industry as a whole. Therefore in 2007 a mission statement was created to encapsulate the sustainability approach. Since 2008, there has been a particular focus reducing CO2 emissions by the new established Sustainability Officer. Oekom publications have always been printed on recycled paper (Blue Angel/FSC) where possible and today the vast majority of paper used has sustainability certification; and in 2016 the company started to abandon all shrink wrap from its product range. “We had anticipated a big pushback from distributors, but it was actually found to be very workable and now, customers complain if they receive a shrink-wrapped book (that was produced before 2016 or if a bookseller shrink wraps one of our books at their own account),” says Anke Oxenfarth. In 2011, Oekom made another big push towards its sustainability goals with the creation of a dedicated Executive Department of Sustainability (which has been led by Anke Oxenfarth ever since) and by launching the Green Publishing Initiative.

The idea for a more systematic initiative to encourage sustainability within the publishing industry grew in 2009 and 2010, when it started to become a topic with other industry stakeholders as well. However, funding for this was needed, so Oekom Verlag took the lead in 2011 and stared a “green publishing” project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, in cooperation with research bodies in Berlin (IÖW) and Heidelberg (ifeu) – they provided the scientific background – and the Frankfurt Book Fair, with Oekom being responsible for communication on the subject within the industry.

The first part of the project ran from 2011-2013 and focused on the development of industry-wide standards. Under the title “Sustainable Publishing – New Environmental Standards for the Publishing Industry”, the team held workshops for stakeholders from across the industry and developed a set of criteria backed by environmental research. Not all of the suggested criteria were initially accepted, and work still needs to be done around some of them, for example a commitment to ensure products are free from biogenetics.

After the criteria had been agreed, the second step was to develop a certification and approval process. This project had the title “Development of an eco-label Blue Angel for eco-friendly printed products” and its outcome was the “Blue Angel RAL-UZ 195” (Blue Angel) for printed matters certificate, which was approved and developed as an industry standard in 2015. This certificate encompasses the entire production cycle and ensures not only that paper and packaging are sustainable, but also the printing process, including the sourcing of inks and energy suppliers.

Currently, the certification does not include Sales and Distribution channels. Anke Oxenfarth says this is “a real shame, but it would have been too big a project to establish. You would open a can of worms if you were to try and formalise this. We at Oekom support sustainable distribution channels as far as we can, and a lot of work has to happen within the industry as a whole to improve a global, sustainable distribution chain.
“Sustainability has become a ‘buzz word’ in this industry and many publishers have started looking at it, but many are only engaging with individual projects that are not embedded in an overall strategy. If more publishers adopted a holistic approach to sustainability, such as we do ourselves and as some – but only a few – others do, it would make the discussion around this topic a whole lot more meaningful.”

More information about the Initiative can be found (in German) under www.greenpublishing.de; some documentation is available in English from here: Green Publishing – Downloads

[written by Annika Bennett, Gold Leaf]

Academic Publishing, Sustainability

Sustainability I – FSC certification

Gold Leaf

Following the advent of digital publishing at the start of the millennium, one of the key arguments to encourage the switch from print was ecological. Digital enthusiasts were quick to claim that using less paper and shipping fewer print books would help to save the environment. Maintaining sustainability in the publishing sector is, however, much more complex; and debates on sustainability began in the industry many years ago, even before digitisation was feasible on a mass scale. Today it has become one of the most pressing issues the industry has to address. Among the most important factors to consider is the carbon footprint: minimising a publisher’s carbon footprint has become the first priority when addressing sustainability targets across the whole industry. It exercises the minds of both trade and academic publishers, as well as paper manufacturers, printers, distributors and even authors and illustrators. A crucial way of achieving this is to build a circular economy which eliminates waste and re-uses resources wherever possible. The paper production industry, which arguably has been under pressure not to waste natural resources for longer than most others, has travelled the furthest distance in this respect; more than 70% of the paper produced in Europe uses pulp; and paper produced in this way can be re-used up to 7 times. Forestry in Europe has also been managed sustainably for the past decade, meaning that carbon dioxide emissions, the biggest problem for the paper manufacturing industry, are being mitigated by the continuing replenishment of the vegetation that combats them.

The FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) was set up to create a global sustainability accreditation in 1993, and along with other environmental standards, such as ISO 14001 and EMAS (EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) has closely supervised sustainability for nearly 30 years.

But how does FSC certification actually work?

The certificate is available to various industries, including paper and cardboard manufacturing; some very specific sector-specific guidance has to be observed in order to gain the award. A key aspect is the use only of wood derived from sustainable forestry, but there is much more to it than that. Frequently-audited Forest Management is only one of two main components that are necessary for a FSC certification; the other one is Chain of Custody certification. This ensures that any company involved in the processing of FSC certified products continues to observe specific regulations and uses checked FSC-labelled woods only. For publishers and printers to become FSC certified, the use of certified papers is obviously essential, but they also are required to use FSC certified printers and distributors. For a product to carry the FSC label at the point of sale, every stage of the process has to be covered by FSC certification – from the forest itself to the finished printed book.
For publishers requiring more information, a fact sheet can be downloaded here.

Many other companies in the supply chain – notably publishers themselves – have felt obliged to develop internal sustainability strategies and find solutions for reducing their own carbon footprint. This has included the move to PoD [Print on Demand] to reduce the numbers of books printed unnecessarily, collaboration with printing companies who in turn are using sustainable methods and ensuring that materials such as inks, packaging and wrapping are as environmentally-friendly as possible; and the use of a sustainable energy supply.

To develop an industrywide sustainability strategy, the Publishers Association launched a Sustainability Taskforce in early 2020. We will talk a bit more about the aims of this in another blog post…

[Written by Annika Bennett, Gold Leaf]