Several members of Cambridge Publishing Management (CPM) attended the event including Jackie, Managing Director, and Catherine, Editorial Manager.
Read Catherine’s summary of the day:
As luck would have it, Monday 15 April was the first warm sunny day for a long time and it seemed a pity to spend it inside Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre, but such is life. Fortunately there was enough buzz inside to make you forget what you were missing outside. My attendance at the book fair was to meet a few clients, dip into the seminars on offer, and to try to get a feel for what is new and trending in publishing.
Working in a converted barn in Caldecote is great for summer lunches outside, picking blackberries and meeting the local pheasants and horses, but it’s important to venture down to London now and again. The tube journey from King’s Cross to Earl’s Court is a good time to get into the right mood for the day, and I traditionally like to play a game of spotting who is on their way to the book fair. Fashion in publishing has changed little: there was the usual spectrum of designer dresses, jeans and corduroy suits, the latter being the easiest to spot en route.
My first destination was a seminar about Open Access in academic journals. Three excellent speakers from Elsevier, OUP and CUP outlined the difference between Gold, Hybrid and Green Open Access, they touched on the many licensing combinations that are available under the Open Access mandate, and explained the main issues of debate. These were too numerous and complex to try to cover comprehensively here, but to give a flavour of the hour, a few of the salient points were: how to cope with the huge increase in the volume of global submissions; the growing importance of their established brands as known marks of trustworthiness (the brand is becoming more important for validation); and the concern over the licence that allows anyone not only to access but to reuse material for their own gain – what happens to Intellectual Property?
I needed lunch with friends to revive me after all that, before meeting up with Jackie for a series of useful and friendly encounters with clients old and new.
Top novelty of the day? Carlton’s augmented reality product Dinosaur Alive, which uses a webcam to activate the software that brings the dinosaurs to life, causing animated dinosaurs to stomp and jump about in front of you. Entrancing!
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