By Ella Fischer
At the start of August, New Zealand publishers big and small converged on cool and grey Auckland for two days of discussing the newest publishing trends, asking the big questions about everything from accessibility to AI, reconnecting with colleagues and forging new connections – in short, the biennial Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) International Conference.
A mihi whakatau by mana whenua Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei officially opened the conference programme, a diverse and engaging set of keynote presentations, breakout sessions, panel discussions and more informal networking opportunities. With a jam-packed schedule and some interesting sessions overlapping, it was hard to decide which ones to attend – just as it is to choose the ones to highlight in this write-up!
AI and publishing
The opening keynote set the tone by focusing on the hot topic of AI – and with three sessions on AI, the implications, pitfalls and opportunities were clearly on everyone’s minds.
PANZ brought an international speaker, Sara Lloyd, Global AI Lead at Pan Macmillan Publishers (UK), to give an insightful talk about AI’s role in the next chapter for publishing.
In a world of infinite content, Sara says, authenticity, facts, quality and curation will be critical. She describes the risks of AI as the “six dangerous Ds”: depersonalisation, data discrepancies, digital divides, dystopian data privacy, duplication and dependency. But she also offers solutions, advocating for a people-centred approach that puts creatives first. AI, she points out, can be most powerful when paired with humans and our emotional intelligence. We can use it to our advantage and enhance our own creativity, while also protecting IP and leading ethically.
So, will AI steal our jobs? Probably not, Sara says, but a human who knows how to use it might. And AI can also create new jobs, just like her new role as global AI lead.
Sara emphasises that publishers have a responsibility to navigate AI on behalf of their creatives. AI is here to stay, and our decisions today will impact our future – a challenge to all of us to work out how to use AI responsibly.
The next keynote showed us just how much there is to figure out. Dr Karaitiana Taiuru (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Toa) is a leading authority and Māori technology ethicist specialising in Māori rights with AI, Māori data sovereignty and governance. His eloquent presentation focused on copyright and IP considerations in the age of AI from a te ao Māori perspective.
Māori are at a crossroads with AI, he says: the choice is to either maintain the status quo or to decolonise and empower themselves. With patchy New Zealand legislation (for example, the Copyright Act 1994 doesn’t consider Māori and Te Tiriti) and only around 29 Māori working in the AI industry, they have their work cut out for them.
Regarding mātauranga Māori, generative AI is reminiscent of colonial ethnographers, Karaitiana explains: it takes data without permission or regard for ownership/attribution, and recreates stories and images in its own view, often losing the original meaning. One example is the AI depiction of Māui, who underwent a name change (no macron), is given a romanticised story and is usually depicted as overweight (while explorers were fit and healthy).
Further exploring the current issues with AI and Māori rights, Karaitiana discusses Māori art and AI (using stolen/appropriated/offensive images is common) and generative AI in the media (news website Stuff.co.nz using AI for Māori translations or moderating bots becoming racist and abusive).
But while there are many problems, Karaitiana also offers strategies to address them and proposes a partnership between te ao Māori and publishers. Suggested starting points are having Māori representatives in the publishing and copyright industries, and engaging with Māori knowledge holders and authors to authenticate stories.
A thoughtful and important talk – I encourage everyone to read more on Karaitiana’s website.
The publishing market and the pain and pleasures of publishing
Slightly less hefty – but just as interesting – topics rounded off the first conference day. The highlights of the 2023 New Zealand publishing market size report, presented by Nevena Nikolic from Nielsen BookData, show a year of contraction with pockets of growth in children’s digital, trade fiction and New Zealand publishing, showing an increased appetite for local stories. The report also shows an ongoing demand for books published in or translated into te reo Māori, which is exciting and encouraging for authors, publishers and readers in this space!
And finally, Matt Heath joined his publisher Michelle Hurley from Allen & Unwin for an entertaining discussion on “the pain and pleasure of publishing a bestselling book”. He offered many behind-the-scenes insights into his writing process, funny anecdotes about writing about his friends and the intricacies of cover design – which, in the case of A Life Less Punishing, readers (and publishers) either seem to love or hate!
Accessibility in publishing
Day two of the conference offered more inspiring insights, from reading for pleasure to BookTok and the evolving relationship between authors and publishers.
The standout for me was a session on accessibility in publishing. This discussion brought together a diverse panel of speakers, chaired by Odessa Owens from Whitireia Publishing. Nigel Waring, head of technology and accessibility at Blind Low Vision New Zealand talked about the process of providing accessible audiobooks to their 16,000 customers and 4,000 active library members. Books to be turned into accessible audiobooks are usually selected through client requests, but even though they have a good set-up with 30 narrators, the demand is too high to fulfil all requests and the wait times are long. Nigel reminded us that our “usual” audiobooks are not accessible, as human voice recordings are not navigable for blind and vision-impaired readers.
Bestselling author Steff Green gave us insights into how she reads as a legally blind person and the books she writes and publishes, focusing on accessible eBooks and audiobooks. Writing diverse, blind and low-vision characters has made her career, she explains passionately – and there are so many opportunities for more diverse characters and authors.
Sarah Runcie, founder and principal consultant of Runcie & Co (an art consultancy in Gadigal/Sydney), added thoughts about inclusive publishing initiatives in Australia, and Karen Workman, creative rights educator for Copyright Licensing New Zealand, spoke about legal requirements and permissions for producing accessible formats. An important reminder for publishers (and a good prompt for us to up our game) is the European Accessibility Act coming into effect in 2025: if your ebooks aren’t accessible, you won’t be able to sell books into the European Union.
The overall message of this session: currently, only a tiny number of books are accessible. For publishing, it is a vulnerability not to address accessibility. We need to futureproof our industry. The speakers also armed us with some helpful resources and steps to take: becoming signatories to the Accessible Books Consortium Charter and reading IPEd’s Books without barriers: a practical guide to inclusive publishing.
So, what did I take away after two days at the PANZ conference?
Overall, the publishing industry has some interesting challenges ahead – grappling with advancing technologies and figuring out how to use them responsibly, protecting the work of our creatives and knowledge holders, and making our books accessible to a more diverse and wider audience. I think if we rise to these challenges, it will ultimately make us – the publishing industry, our books and the stories we tell – more diverse and stronger.
As someone still relatively new to publishing and working in a small team, the professional development opportunities that PANZ organises are incredibly valuable. Most of all, though, I enjoyed the chance to meet other people working in the industry and hearing about the amazing work they do and the stories they help get out into the world – it’s a wonderful little corner to be part of.