Restivo-Alessi, Lloyd and Sharabi join FutureBook Conference speakers

Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer and executive vice-president, international, at HarperCollins Publishers, is to give the closing morning keynote at this year’s FutureBook Conference. Restivo-Alessi, who runs the HarperCollins’ Global Publishing Programme, will talk about the firm’s approach to digital and global publishing and how the two join up.

Restivo-Alessi joins five morning speakers at the forthcoming FutureBook Conference on 1st December, including Richard Johnson, group chief executive of Bonnier Publishing.

Also announced this week are Vikki Chowney, chief content strategist with Hill+Knowlton Strategies UK; Sara Lloyd, digital and communications director at Pan Macmillan; and Asi Sharabi, co-founder and c.e.o. at personalised book company Wonderbly.

HarperCollins’ global publishing initiative was first unveiled during the London Book Fair in April 2015 with the surprise announcement of a four-book Karin Slaughter deal, taking the author from Penguin Random House in a deal spanning world English rights and more than a dozen foreign languages.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, Restivo-Alessi told The Bookseller that HarperCollins grew Slaughter’s sales in each region where her book Pretty Girls was released under its global publishing programme, and that the initiative was expanding.

Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and programme director of FutureBook, said: "FutureBook is now the leading digital and innovations conference covering the publishing and book communities, attracting leading executives from across the globe is one of the reasons the conference has become the go-to event in the publishing calender for forward thinking publishers, agents, authors and retailers."

Lloyd and Sharabi will take part in a conversation, chaired by FutureBook associate editor Molly Flatt, about “innovation” in the book business, and how to ensure companies—from start-ups to corporates—can continue to develop proactively within rapidly developing marketplaces.

Chowney will provide an overview of the latest digital and social media trends likely to impact the publishing business over the next 12 months. It follows last year’s successful talk from from James Whatley, planning partner of innovation, at Ogilvy & Mather.

Earlybird tickets are now available at www.thebookseller.com/futurebook-conference. For group bookings, email Grace Harrison (grace.harrison@thebookseller.com) or, for sponsorship opportunities, contact Emma Lowe (emma.lowe@thebookseller.com).