[Update on 22 August 2023: The deadline for nominations has been extended to Friday, September 1st, 2023.]
Nominations are currently being accepted for the ABC International Excellence Award for Accessible Publishing. This award acknowledges exceptional leadership and accomplishments in promoting the accessibility of commercial e-books or other digital publications for individuals who are blind, visually impaired, or have other print disabilities.
Richard Charkin was Vice President of the IPA in 2013-14 and then President in 2015-16. His time at the top included many decisions and events that have made the IPA what it is today. Recently, he published My Back Pages: An Undeniably Personal History of Publishing, 1972-2022: a book that recounts his life as a publisher, from tentative beginnings straight out of university, through some of the most important publishing companies in the English speaking world, to his current incarnation as a one-man-band at Mensch. IPA Secretary General, José Borghino, asked him a few questions.
On Friday, June 2, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), Penguin Random House, Candlewick Press, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Scholastic Inc., and Simon & Schuster filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs, patrons of the Llano County Library System in Llano County, Texas, in the case of Little v. Llano County, a suit that challenges the actions taken by members of the Llano County Commissioners Court, members of the Llano County Library Board, and the Llano County Library System Director, to remove 17 books from the shelves of the public library system.
Copyright Reform or Reframe?, a monograph published on 20 April by South African publisher Juta, provides a comprehensive legal analysis of most of the new provisions of the South African Copyright and Performers’ Protection Amendment Bills. The authors, all of them attorneys or advocates with specialist practices in the field of intellectual property law – in particular, copyright – contributed to the submission of the South African Institute of Intellectual Property Law on the Bills to South Africa’s Parliament and the Provincial Legislatures in 2023.
Michiel Kolman, Chair of the IPA's Inclusive Publishing and Literacy Committee spoke to Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association (UK) about their Inclusivity Action Plan and their past work on diversity and inclusion.
I write this post while returning home from a board meeting of the Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) and the celebration of the Marrakesh Treaty’s 10th anniversary at the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, in Geneva.
