Speakers for IPA Congress panel “Emerging Markets: New Technologies; New Challenges”
By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
It is no secret that technology has an incredible impact on the international publishing industry. Over the last 20 years, from ebooks to AI, publishers have had to navigate changing formats, a changing supply chain, exponentially more books published, threats to IP and copyright, and a changing marketplace.This week, at the International Publishers Association Congress in Kuala Lumpur, a panel entitled “Emerging Markets: New Technologies; New Challenges” explored how publishers in three different Asian regions are investing in new technologies and how that is impacting their work.
“There is no single model for innovation,” started moderator Fatimah Abbas, International Publishing Consultant & AI Strategist. “Every publishing ecosystem adapts technology differently, shaped by its readers, languages, educational systems, infrastructure, and local market realities.”
Turning to speakers Law King Hui, Group Managing Director, Sasbadi Holdings Berhad in Malaysia; GeumJoo Lin, Co-Founder & CEO, CO.MINT Inc. in Korea; and Ali Abd El-Moneim Ahmed, Co-Founder & CEO, Arabookverse International in Egypt, Abbas asked each to share one technology transforming publishing in there markets. It came as no surprise to the audience that AI played a huge role in each response.
Law has spent 46 years in the business, navigating the arrival of technologies from the internet to social media, PowerPoint, and now AI, and he noted that the industry has been in a transition period for close to 20 years.
“The biggest challenge is always how to balance the profitability of digital solutions with investment,” said Law. “The internal challenges usually come from the user’s perspective–we are the user of technology here and it is usually cost related. External challenges are revenue related and it has something to do with the products that you build and the competition that you face. AI suddenly flattened the playing field making publishers, like myself, who used to have competitive advantages that we built over years, there is now more competition.”
With Arabookverse, technology is what helped further the vision to make Arabic digital content accessible and available anytime, anywhere to anyone. Ahmed noted that the project has been scaling rapidly over the last two years with partnerships with Amazon, Bookwire, and the Sharjah Book Authority, with plans for increased growth in the next three years digitizing 100,000 ebooks and 1000 audiobooks.
“We are living now in a digital revolution and the AI framework opens all the doors and give us all opportunity to make change, but the most important thing is to focus on how we can use it in Egypt for better analysis on customer behavior, competitor behavior, and managing the production process,” said Ahmed.
In South Korea, Lin highlights that she has always been connecting content, technology, and brands in her rights agency and consultancy, but one of the key concerns that she thinks publishers should be aware of with AI is how to protect copyright while maximizing rights opportunities.
“I want to frame AI as not only a single technology issue,” said Lin. “[We must think about] how content is used, learned from, transformed, licensed, and compensated.”
“AI is already testing the trust system of publishing in Korea. AI is being used for group, recommendation, conversational search, and reading support.”
Lin also noted the rise of ‘one-click publishing’ of AI-generated books. And, while that is happening all over the world and is troubling enough, Lin noted a more problematic aspect of this situation which further erodes trust in publishing.
“These books are being submitted to the National Library of Korea to receive legal deposit compensation under the Library Act.”
Each speaker saw the benefits of using AI for their respective markets and work, but also warned the audience of the pitfalls and the necessity of working together to put some guidelines in place for AI use in the industry to protect the trust in knowledge, the industry as a whole, and the engagement with readers.