Recently I’ve been doing some research on the size and scope of the UK book and journal publishing industry, based on data from Companies House. This research is a preparatory step towards building a database of companies, highly relevant for my work as an independent consultant and as policy advisor for the Independent Publishers Guild, which represents over 600 book and journal publishers of all sizes. The other trade body, the Publishers Association lists 168 members at the time of writing, particularly larger, corporate publishers—though there is some overlap between the two organisations’ memberships. The UK publishing sector is world leading, representing over £7 billion of revenue, and it represents the bulk of my client base. So it’s worth understanding.

Last September, BookNet Canada invited me to speak at their Tech Forum webinar on the use of AI in publishing. Looking back at my slides, it’s remarkable how much the world has moved on since then, though the eight principles I set out have held up pretty well.

I was invited to deliver a short webinar today for the Swedish Publishers Association and its international affiliates. It was great to see a very strong turnout and thank you to my hosts for arranging it. I talked about recent trends in AI, how publishers are approaching it, and examples of how AI tools are being used.