Episoder
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Will Crook, head of policy and communications at Publishers' Licensing Services (PLS), is the guest on this episode of the IPG Podcast. He discusses the vital issue of copyright in publishing, especially as it relates to the threats of Artificial Intelligence, as well as the work that PLS is doing to make sure publishers' interests are represented in government.
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The EU Deforestation Regulation comes into force at the end of 2024 and has some important implications for UK publishers operating in Europe. CPI's director of environment and sustainability Lisa Faratro joins the Podcast to introduce the EUDR, explain what publishers will need to do to comply with it, and share some useful resources for support.
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With costs rising and pressure growing to reduce the carbon footprint of books, this episode of the IPG Podcast looks at what publishers can do to become more sustainable, both financially and environmentally. Our guest is Vicky Ellis-Duveen of Clays, who has some excellent advice for making many areas of print, production and supply more cost-effective and greener.
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Publishers' Licensing Services is at the heart of publishing in the UK, distributing millions of pounds a year via collective licensing and supporting publishers with rights management and permissions. This episode of the IPG Podcast welcomes chief executive Tom West to talk about its history, purpose and future, as well as some of the big issues facing his organisation and publishing at the moment, including around AI.
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Suzanne Collier, founder of the Bookcareers service, joins the podcast to talk about people-related issues in publishing in 2024. She discusses subjects including recruitment, retention, wellbeing, redundancies and more, and shares some good advice for both employers and employees.
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Stephanie Kitchen, co-director of the African Books Collective, joins the podcast to chat about the story and work of the organisation in improving the profile and availability of books from across Africa. She also talks about the visibility of African books in general in the UK now, and about what more can be done to get African voices heard on a global stage.
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Chris Hamilton-Emery, co-founder of poetry and literary fiction publisher Salt, tells us the highs and lows of his journey in publishing. He also chats about the value of independence and community in publishing and shares some of the lessons he's learned over nearly 25 years in the industry.
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Brexit has led to major issues for UK publishers selling books in Europe. In this episode of the IPG Podcast, James Dunphy of Durnell Marketing discusses the big problems and shares some advice to help publishers make their sales and distribution easier and more effective.
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This episode of the IPG Podcast looks at the value of specialist and purpose-driven independents to publishing and the cultural life of the UK. Our guest is Simon Liebesny, formerly of Pluto Press and now associate publisher at Saqi Books. Simon also talks about his career in publishing, plans for Saqi and the importance of communities like the IPG in our industry.
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As Artificial Intelligence begins to transform some aspects of publishing, this episode of the IPG Podcast gets an expert overview of the subject from Nadim Sadek, founder and CEO of AI marketing specialist Shimmr, and author of 'Shimmer, Don't Shake', a guide to embracing AI in our industry. Nadim shares his views on the opportunities and challenges of AI and has some great advice for publishers who are starting to adopt it in their work.
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Large print books help millions of people to read content they couldn't otherwise access—but it's a format that doesn't always get the attention it deserves. In this episode of the IPG Podcast Ingram's Laura Dolan shares some great advice for publishers on production, pricing, discoverability and more, and flags useful resources to help.
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With the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair approaching, this episode of the IPG Podcast discusses multi-media rights and how the event can support visiting publishers. Jenny Kuehne, director of rights and licensing solutions, joins us to chat about opportunities to sell film, TV and audio rights, share new rights-related activities at this year's Book Fair and offer a few tips for making the most of a visit.
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Dawn Owens is the founder of the Owens Publishing Company, a US hybrid-style publisher and very likely the IPG's first member based in Texas! She joins the IPG Podcast to tell us about her journey into independent publishing and the rewards it brings.
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Seonaid Francis joins the Podcast to tell us the story of west Wales based publisher Black Bee Books. She remembers what it was like to launch a business during Covid lockdowns, discusses Black Bee's journey and ambitions, and talks about the special role of independent publishers in supporting under-represented voices.
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Writer, publisher and charity leader Lela Burbridge joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to tell us her inspiring life story and journey into the world of books. She also tells us about her charitable work in Uganda and the power of books and reading to change lives.
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Recommendation and bookselling platform LoveReading gives publishers a great chance to promote their titles and help raise money for books in schools. Co-owner and director Deborah Maclaren joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to tell us all about it.
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Sidonie Beresford-Browne joins this episode of the IPG Podcast to talk about the story of Raspberry Books, a children's books packager that is now starting to publish titles of its own too. Sidonie shares the ups and downs of Raspberry's journey so far, and some thoughts on independent publishing in general.
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As publishers continue efforts to make their content available to all, this episode of the IPG Podcast discusses accessibility issues with Julie Willis of River Editorial, a division of Westchester Publishing Services UK. Julie offers some good advice for the benefits and practicalities of fully-accessibie content and discusses the implications of the European Accessibility Act for publishers.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the IPG Podcast. I'm Tom Holman of the IPG. In this podcast we're talking about accessibility in publishing—an important subject of course. Awareness of the need to make content freely available to everyone has grown steadily over the years, but there's still some work to be done. To talk about that is Julie Willis, who is editorial director and systems lead at River Editorial, a division of Westchester Publishing Services UK. Julie is particularly passionate and knowledgeable about this subject, and she's with us to share some good advice for any publishers who are working on accessibility projects at the moment. I hope you find our conversation useful.
Tom Holman / Hi Julie, and thanks for joining us on the Podcast. It's great to have you. Before we talk about accessibility, maybe you could give us just a quick guide to Westchester and River Editorial and the services you offer to publishers these days.
Julie Willis / Of course, and thank you for having me Tom. We are River Editorial, which is a part of the UK division of Westchester Publishing Services, a 50 year-old employee-owned US company. We've got wholly-owned typesetting operations in India, and we map our ethical approach to employment across those two operations, as well as in the UK.
Westchester Publishing Services UK is celebrating five years of existence. There are two divisions: River Editorial is headed up by myself and Rosie Stewart, and we manage all aspects of book production for clients including academic publishers of books and journals, as well as organizations and institutions. The education division is headed by Rebecca Durose-Croft and has a large client base, providing upstream services like content creation, curriculum mapping and culturally responsive education reviews to name a few.
Tom Holman / Well, happy fifth birthday! I know a lot of IPG members work with you already. So why should publishers be interested in accessibility? There's a moral reason of course—that content should be available to everyone—but I guess there's some sound commercial reasons too?
Julie Willis / Above both of those reasons is that it will become compulsory via the European Accessibility Act in June 2025—but we’ll come on to talk about that a little later. Commercially, it's been demonstrated by the likes of Apple that customers will buy into your brand if your values as a business mirror their own. There are lots of different phones available on the market, so why do you buy an iPhone? Because you value the same things as Apple. The same is true for businesses that demonstrate they are prioritizing accessibility. If that is a value that your potential customer holds, then they will choose you and your books over others. There's also 80 million people in the EU with a disability—so clearly there's a market there that you can attract.
Morally, equal access is clearly a goal of modern western society. Everyone should be able to have the same user experience across all platforms, but especially digital platforms. There's no real excuse for that to be any different for anybody in this day and age.
Tom Holman / When we talk about accessibility, what exactly are we talking about in practical terms? What are the specific things that publishers should be doing to make sure that those 80 million people can access their content?
Julie Willis / It's a really good question. Accessibility requirements extend to all digital content, so for publishers that includes their websites as well as their epubs and any other digital deliverables that they provide on a practical level. The very basic things are providing something called alt text, which is short for alternative text, and means that a screen reader can read out a description of the figures and tables.
Alt text must be supplied for figures, so it needs to include what a person with full sight would see and interpret from those figures. Tables have to be tagged correctly so a screen reader can read them in the correct order, as you would read them as a sighted person. So for more complex titles, like education titles that have columns and so on, you can imagine that if it doesn’t have the right reading order, it wouldn't make sense. Font choice should be taken into account for neurodivergent individuals, and colour contrast for the same reason. If you've got multi-media content, then transcripts have to be available for those, and there are other considerations, like seizure warnings. That's a very basic introduction to what we should be doing, but there are many more standards and guidance points that we need to consider along with those top-level ones.
Tom Holman / There's a lot to think about there. Are there any useful accessibility standards or resources out there that people should be aware of?
Julie Willis / Absolutely. The main one that most people are working towards at the moment is WCAG —Web Content Accessibility Guidelines—2.1 Level AA, to be superseded by WCAG 3.0, which provides standards for neurodivergence and autism. It’s an international organization and their website has enormous amounts of information and guidelines to help guide you through the requirements.
There is also an International Standard Organization control—30071-1—which brings it all together. That goes beyond technical standards and talks about embedding accessibility into your managerial processes. If you've heard of the expression ‘born accessible’, that is the key—the goal that we're trying to reach. There's also an organization called the Daisy Consortium that provides tools and standards and advice for best practice within the publishing industry for people with print disabilities. That doesn’t just mean print—it means digital accessibility Issues as well.
There's also an organization called PAAG, which stands for Publishing Accessibility Action Group. They have a Charter that you can sign up to, and I would encourage publishers to look at getting their house in order so they can sign up, which requires certain standards to be met.
Tom Holman / It's good to know that there's a lot of help out there. And there's an awful lot of acronyms in there as well! You mentioned the European Accessibility Act earlier. There's a lot of talk about it at the moment, but there's also uncertainty about what it actually means in practice. I guess in some ways it's too early to tell, but what's your sense of the implications for publishers?
Julie Willis / One element I want to get across is that the Act is already in existence. It's already been passed and we've already signed up to it. It’s enforced from 28th June 2025, so that date is a benchmark, but it’s already in existence. Key individuals in the industry that have read the Act feel that that backlist conversion is within its scope, and obviously that's an enormous task. So not only does it mean then that all books published after 28th June 2025 have to be accompanied by an accessible epub, it also looks like the backlist has to be converted. However, it looks like there's a five-year grace period in which you can get your backlist fully accessible. There’s more information online about the Act and what it means for publishers.
Tom Holman / And finally, what can Westchester do to help IPG members on this front? There's a lot to get through, and some publishers might feel a bit daunted by it. What can you do to help with accessibility?
Julie Willis / Well, we're a Benetech accredited supplier. Benetech is a global non-profit technology organization that validates the accessibility standards of our epubs and continues to check them annually as well. We're offering IPG members a deal to create certified-accessible epubs for them—normally they couldn't get that certification themselves, but because we are producing the files for them we can certify the files individually. We can do that for both frontlist and obviously for conversion of backlist epubs.
We're also looking to organize an accessibility webinar In the summer, and we plan to invite key individuals within the industry to discuss the European Accessibility Act in more detail and give publishers the latest interpretation of what it means for them. We'll be publicizing both of those in the IPG’s newsletter.
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As publishing works towards net-zero status, carbon offsetting has become a big talking point. In this episode of the IPG Podcast Martin Klopstock talks about Kogan Page's excellent work on sustainability and why and how it offsets emissions to reduce its environmental impacts.
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Christi Daugherty and Jack Jewers of Moonflower Books - winner of the Nick Robinson Newcomer Award at the 2023 Independent Publishing Awards - join the podcast to share their story. They talk about Moonflower's rapid success and the factors behind it, with inspiration for every new publisher to take away.
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