Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, looks back on 2022

Dan Conway, CEO of the Publishers Association, reflects on 2022 in his introduction to our Annual Report.

2022 was a year characterised by change. For the industry, it was the year where a sense of normality began to resume after a period of what can only be described as unparalleled disruption. We had our first in-person London Book Fair since the pandemic, followed by Frankfurt, and more recently Bologna. We began to gather at events, both in the UK and abroad, and I for one was glad to be surrounded by so many familiar faces again.

For me personally, I stepped up to become CEO of the Publishers Association. I have been incredibly proud to take on the role and I would like to sincerely thank all members for their support this year and, in particular, Publishers Association Officers Nigel Newton, Antonia Seymour and David Shelley for their time and counsel.

For the Association, sustainability has continued to be a strategic focus and this year we launched our Carbon Calculator and Materials Matrix. Both of these sustainability tools are the first of their kind and completely bespoke to the publishing industry. They follow on from our Publishing Declares pledge and show further commitment from us and our members in working towards a more sustainable future.

As ever, copyright has also been a major focus and one that binds our membership together. As Artificial Intelligence develops and law-makers consider the impacts, we must continue to strongly make the case for a strong and stable legal framework and balanced regulation. That is why, following months of hard work from the Publishers
Association, we welcomed the government’s decision not to proceed with a blanket exception to copyright for text and data mining for any purpose. This also followed the very welcome decision in January 2022 not to amend the UK’s copyright exhaustion regime.

Another highpoint to report this year has been progress made in the area of content protection and enforcement. Our team provided critical assistance in the global
shutdown of the 200+ domain pirate network, Z-Library, working with international law enforcement. The team’s work in this area will continue to progress next year,
including supporting members with a wider set of online piracy platforms.

Towards the end of the year, we also finalised the second iteration of the Publishers Association ‘Inclusivity Action Plan’. Looking back at our original plan, published in
2017, the sector has made significant inroads. Publishers have worked hard to move the needle, but as always, there is still more work to be done in this area next year.

We have a lot to be proud of. You’ll see in the pages of this report some of the Publishers Association’s key achievements, but what you don’t see is the time and dedication from all of our members in helping us drive this work.

Whether it be advice on specific issues, being involved in our working groups and Councils, or helping gather crucial data, we can only say thank you and ask that you continue to see the value of what we can achieve together.

We are pleased with the progress we have made over the past year, and we look forward to continuing to proudly champion the value of publishing – across the academic, education, and consumer sectors – both for society and for the UK economy next year.

This was originally published in the Publishers Association Annual Report 2022.