Peter and Nicola Usborne to speak at Children’s Conference

Peter Usborne and his daughter and deputy m.d., Nicola Usborne, are speaking at this year’s The Bookseller Children’s Conference on 24th September.

The pair will be taking to the stage for an in-conversation event with The Bookseller’s editor, Philip Jones, where they will discuss their secret to more than 40 years in publishing.

Peter Usborne set up Usborne Publishing in 1973 and the business now publishes in more than 100 languages around the world and has annual turnover of nearly £80m.

The company is best known for its innovative non-fiction but also publishes baby books, picture books, middle-grade and YA novels. This year it won a hat-trick of fiction prizes: the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the YA Book Prize and the Branford Boase.

The theme of the The Bookseller Children's Conference programme this year is ‘Global Versus Local: Keeping books relevant to all children, everywhere’ and the speakers will explore how publishers and book creators balance the need to sell globally while catering for individual groups of readers.

The keynote speech will be given by Hanna Otero, the US-based publisher of Lonely Planet Kids. Other speakers include Philip Pullman, David Fickling, Penguin Random House Children’s, HarperCollins Children’s Books, Knights Of and National Poetry Day.

The conference will also run a second stream for the first time, with speakers from the film, TV and gaming industries. Speakers in this stream include TV executive Nigel Pickard—who launched CBBC and CBeebies and is working with author M G Leonard on an adaptation of her Beetle Boy trilogy—as well as producer Billy Macqueen, TV programme creator Gráinne McGuinness, and Camilla Deakin, joint-m.d. of Lupus Films.