Can We Adjust to a World Without In-Person Publishing Events?
/by Mike Groth
There are very few industries which cherish live events more than the publishing industry. From big global conferences to local literary festivals, networking events to gala dinners, award ceremonies to book launches, our industry is one which has been built on the foundations of face-to-face contact, the pressing of flesh, the forming of enduring and meaningful relationships, and getting out there to see and be seen.
This is why publishing, maybe more than any other profession, is facing something of an identity crisis as significant calendar events get cancelled, rescheduled or brought online due to COVID-19, thus transforming the way we’ve gone about our business for decades.
London Book Fair 2019. Photo by Mike Groth.
KGL certainly has felt the absence of live book fairs and conferences this spring, usually one of the main ways we catch up with customers, engage with new contacts, and serve the community by participating on committees and panels. From the Council of Science Editors and Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meetings, to our significant presence at the London Book Fair, social distancing has drastically changed the way we connect with the market.
So in a week when many publishers wrestled with the challenges around getting to, or not getting to, this year’s still-on Frankfurt Book Fair—the big daddy of all international publishing events—we conducted a straw poll to explore the attitudes of publishing professionals towards the rapidly evolving events landscape.
The findings revealed that just over half (54%) of those polled felt that the industry could still function without in-person events, given that many event organizers have managed to successfully pivot and provide virtual alternatives, to varying degrees of efficiency and popularity.
When quizzed on which aspects of live in-person events they would most miss, 85% of respondents stated that ‘serendipitous encounters’ would be at the top of their list, while ‘ease of networking’ (80%) and personal ‘visibility for career enhancement’ (also 80%) followed closely behind.
Meanwhile, in response to an open-ended question about how publishing professionals’ jobs and businesses will likely be affected by a lack of real-world events, the majority claimed that they foresee a modest to significant impact on everything from revenue to lead generation, brand exposure to fostering new and existing relationships. Others claimed it was too soon to tell exactly how these changes were affecting their prospects.
On the perceived benefits of attending virtual events instead of in-person events, ‘cost savings on traveling and exhibiting’ (77%) topped the list, with ‘increased flexibility to attend selective sessions’ (62%) and ‘access to events which one would not ordinarily attend’’ (54%) also noteworthy responses. Significantly, 31% felt strongly that there were no benefits at all to online event alternatives.
The results of the poll paint a mixed picture. While some publishing professionals can see the many advantages of virtual events and don’t envision the online migration affecting their day-to-day in a significant way, others are far more skeptical and anticipate that this cultural change could harm their livelihoods and businesses.
It remains to be seen exactly what long-term impacts the COVID-19 pandemic will have on the global publishing events landscape—whether there are elements of events, such as conferences, seminars and panels, which will ever return to some degree of normality or remain in a virtual format—and in turn just how detrimental these last few months have been for publishers who have been unable to get on with business as usual. Time will tell.
Will things ever be exactly the same again? Probably not. While our love affair with live, real-world events endures, this crisis is teaching all of us some valuable lessons, forcing us to think long and hard about the role physical events play in our working lives, what aspects can be deemed as essential, necessary and beneficial, and on the flip side, unnecessary, excessive and avoidable.
Michael Groth is Director of Marketing at KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (formerly Cenveo Publisher Services) and longtime denizen of the scholarly publishing industry. He can be reached at mike.groth@kwglobal.com.