Diversity discussions lead IPG autumn conference

Diversity in the book industry, Amazon and selling TV and film rights were some of the hot topics of the IPG's biggest ever autumn conference on Tuesday (19th September).

More than 300 delegates turned out to listen to 20 speakers, across 17 sessions. A significant proportion of the audience (40%) attended the IPG event for the first time, it was revealed via interactive handsets for instant voting during the talks.

In a packed-out session on diversity, librarian Joy Court, chair of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, highlighted the independent review currently underway to address the outrage sparked earlier this year by lack of representation of BAME authors on 2017's Carnegie longlist. 

Reflecting on the episode, which at the time was branded by Jhalak Prize co-founder Sunny Singh a "deliberate snub", Court said the prize and its judges found the wave of "understandable" criticism "extremely shocking" and had been "horrified" it might be perceived they had "failed" to uphold their own "ethical moral principles".

"We perhaps were a bit blasé thinking the argument had been made," said Court. "But certainly from the point of view of children's librarians, we were brought up with quite a shock at the furore that hit us with the publication of the longlist of the Carnegie medals when understandably there was criticism because there were no BAME authors represented on the list.

"When you consider 200 books are nominated and only 20 are longlisted, there may be some reason for thinking that's not necessarily unusual; we had been pleased at the number of books nominated, which is the first step. There are no publisher submissions, (the book) has to have come to the attention of a librarian - so to get through to nomination is a real triumph for a book. But they didn't in the end make it through to the final 20 and there was outrage at that.

"The library profession - certainly everyone involved with the medals and the judges - felt horrified it could be perceived we had failed in what we considered to be our ethical moral principles. Such a fundamental thing about librarianship and about supporting the community of the library service, it was extremely shocking to us."

The review, although prompted by the controversy, is part of the organisation’s overarching Equality and Diversity Action Plan, itself the result of a workforce-mapping exercise with the Arts Council in which it was found the library profession has "an ageing workforce, a gender pay gap and a distinct lack of ethnic diversity".

In the same session, Janetta Otter-Barry, formerly of Frances Lincoln Children's Books, took the opportunity to highlight "diverse and inclusive" successes on lists she has worked on, including Grace, The Great Big Book of Families and Emmi.

"I do believe all children should have the chance to see themselves in books whatever their cultural background. But I also believe children should experience other cultures through books, for Western children to see other religions and cultures so that we can create tolerance, empathy, understanding - all those things we need so badly right at the moment," she said.

Nic Bottomley, bookseller at the Bath-based Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights and vice president of the Booksellers Association (BA), also touched on the issue of diversity in a talk he gave chaired by Head of Zeus chief executive Amanda Rideout on the state of bookselling. He said it was "brilliant" the BA had put a session on diversity at the forefront of its annual conference programme last week and pointed out the "fairly scandalous lack of black and minority booksellers in the industry" and the need to "collaborate on both sides to reflect modern Britain". 

Striking an optimistic note, he went on to appraise the increase in delegates seen at the BA's conference - the result of new shops opening and bookshops sending more staff - while the professionalism of bookselling was getting "better and better". The future of bookselling is "opinionated bookselling", he argued, suggesting that retailers should chat to customers every time they come into the shop and help them find new things.

Of Amazon, which he referred to as "a tape worm rummaging through the guts of this industry", he made a plea for publishers not to actively encourage sales from the e-commerce giant by directing customers to its website. "We need to make sure Amazon does play fair and we don't have an unequal playing field," he said. "When we are out there hand-selling, it is so galling to find publishers directing customers to Amazon."

Meanwhile in a separate session, indie publishers were told they could not afford to ignore the film and TV market. The "golden age of video content" has come, delegates heard from IP consultancy company Kickback Media's John Lomas-Bullivant, who said that 10-15% of indie publishers' lists on average would be of some value to film producers. There is an opportunity to take advantage of "significant marketing and revenue advantage", he said, with the potential to turn a small independent into a major player.

Other sessions included motivating talks from Saatchi & Saatchi London chairman Richard Huntington on building a meaningful brand, on making the most of Facebook and other social media, tips for working with freelancers from Whitefox's John Bond, a talk from IPG patron Martin Woodhead advocating good governance under non-executive business directors (NEDs), and discussion of higher education and academic publishing in sessions with Wonkhe's David Kernohan and Cambridge University Press' m.d. Mandy Hill. 

The History Press team (l-r: m.d. Gareth Swaine, with staff Annette and Verity), whose book Victoria and Abdul has been adapted into a major film, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Dame Judi Dench.