Publishers must adapt to meet new challenges or face extinction said Alec Ross, a leading innovation expert during his keynote address to the 3rd Arab Publishers Conference at Al Jawaher Reception and Convention Centre in Sharjah yesterday (Tuesday). Ross, is a former Senior Advisor for Innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Convener for the Technology, Media & Telecommunications Policy Committee on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.On the second day of the conference, in the opening session moderated by Mishaal Al Gergawi, Managing Director at The Delma Institute, Ross said we are living in the technological age and that those who controlled the data had economic and political power, much like landowners during the agricultural age or the factory owners during the industrial age.He said, “The key to understanding our future is to understand our past. Digital data has had the biggest impact on the publishing industry since the Gutenberg Press which took information and education away from the elite and made it available to the masses.
Today there are 16 billion connected devices but by 2020 there will be 40 billion, not because more people have more devices but because they will infiltrate our lives at home and at work.”Ross pointed out that 90% of the world’s data had been generated in last two years and he urged publishers to find ways to harness this data by partnering with computer science departments at universities or the tech industry to find algorithms that help publishers find buyers and distribution solutions. “Fundamentally we live in a changing economy and history has shown us that it is not the strongest who survive but those who are more adaptable to change. New technology is out there that can compress big data making it easier to share large texts quickly and easily over social media and it can be encrypted in order to ensure it’s not stolen. Intellectual Property is so important to protect, if publishers don’t make a profit they go out of business and we will have destroyed an industry. But we need classic, edited, quality publications because we cannot educate our children with Facebook posts and twitter.”
For Arab publishers to survive Ross suggested that in addition to partnering with computer scientists, translation will afford new opportunities.
He said, “Today we have Google translate processing billions of translations a day. In the near future this technology is going to be so good it will do things we previously thought only people could do, including comprehending dialects. Right now only tech firms are working with this but I suggest Arab publishers get involved and see where they can profit and benefit from being in the centre of this development.” Ross’ final piece of advice was that the small publisher should be using social media to reach buyers and develop new markets. He said with nearly 3 billion native Arabic speakers who were dispersed around the world making distribution hard, social media marketing offered a good opportunity to raise awareness of their authors and find new markets. In closing Ross cautioned, “We should not imagine a world without books but we must plan for a world with less books.” The Arab Publishers Conference, organized by the Arab Publishers Association in collaboration with the Emirates Publishers’ Association, addresses a number of vital and important themes in the publishing industry and it includes concludes today (Tuesday).