Digital Publishing Summit 2024

This year we have the honour of welcoming Georges Kerscher (DAISY) to give the opening speech at our 8th Digital Publishing Summit.

Laurent Le Meur, CTO of EDRLab, will briefly present the projects currently being developed by our organisation. The presentation will cover new collaborations as well as progress on projects that we have been working on over the years.

Introducing the new Beletrina Digital platform, to be launched in spring 2024 and developed in collaboration with NOOP, EDRLab and Beletrina. Protected by LCP, the platform supports multi-format content including: e-books, audiobooks, films (including art films, documentaries, short films), podcasts, video programs, articles.

A presentation by Marko Hercog, CTO of Beletrina.

With the advent of the EU Accessibility Act in 2025, all key players of the digital publishing industry need to adapt their workflow and products to prepare for a natively accessible future.

This session will cover some of the low hanging fruits that publishers and distributors can focus on to improve their metadata and production pipeline. It will also peep into the near feature to showcase some of the key areas that will impact their ability to produce natively accessible content and remediate their backlist.

A discussion with Hadrien Gardeur and Gautier Chomel (EDRLab).

A step-by-step methodology that publishers can apply no matter its nature or size with the aim of becoming an accessible publishing house.

Ana María Bermúdez is a Publisher at Penguin Random House Mexico, overseeing the imprints Conecta and Origen and collaborates in Aguilar. She studied a BA in Linguistics and Hispanic Literature (BUAP) and the MA in Digital Publishing at (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) and several diplomas on Intellectual Property Management (WIPO), Publishing Studies (UNAM), Business Analytics (Udacity) and Telcommunications and ICT (URJ). Her master´s degree final project was named La guía para la edición universal en editoriales mexicanas (In English, Universal Publishing Guide for Mexican Publishing Houses).

Digital publishing is subject to external injunctions linked to legal provisions and societal issues, which are sometimes beyond the control of players in the sector. To remain profitable while meeting the expectations of audiences and funders, publishing houses need to acquire a wide range of skills. Digital production teams cannot confine themselves to typography, performance, interoperability, accessibility, eco-design, security or personal data management. It is imperative to coordinate these diverse areas of expertise.

Presentation by Louis Marle (Albin Michel) and Vincent Gros (Hachette), from the The French Publishers Association (SNE) Norms and Standards group. This group is working on the quality of ebooks as a whole, integrating corporate social responsibility into the digital publishing realities.

The deployment of the new version of the Readium LCP DRM has started. This V2 brings a new level of security for rights owners, and the open-source software which supports this new version is easier to integrate with distribution platforms. In this session, we’ll give an overview of what you can expect from LCP V2 and inform you about the current level of deployment of LCP, worldwide.

A presentation by Laurent Le Meur, CTO of EDRLab and Priyanka Dalotra, LCP Product Manager.

Learn more about the LCP DRM

Have you ever wondered how publishers and others in the publishing chain are using artificial intelligence technologies to automate their work? Recent developments such as large language models and generative AI technologies are revolutionising the industry, but they also raise new challenges and issues.

Join us for an exciting panel where we will discuss the current state of the technology, emerging practices and the needs and expectations of tomorrow. We’ll explore how publishers can take advantage of these technologies to improve their work while addressing the ethical and practical challenges they pose. We will also look at the future prospects for editing and publishing, exploring how AI technologies can help enhance products and services.

An introductory message from Adam Hyde (Coko Foundation), followed by a discussion moderated by Virginie Clayssen, president of EDRLab, with Samuel Petit (Comix AI, Groupe De Marque), Gregorio Pellegrino (Fondazione LIA), and Vincent Gros (Hachette).

In the context of the European Accessibility Act, how can publishers evaluate the impact of converting any backlist ebook titles, and what are the possibilities and costs of remediation? The Accessible Backlist Ebook Laboratory (ABELab) partners will present the outcomes of this Creative Europe funded project.

A presentation by Chiara De Martin (Fondazione LIA) and Ted van der Togt (KB.nl).

Chiara De Martin is Web Accessibility Expert at Fondazione LIA. She conducts accessibility tests of websites, web platforms and mobile applications and manages usability tests with Assistive Technologies and print impaired users. She also participates in the research and development activities of Fondazione LIA in the field of digital and publishing accessibility.
She’s member of the W3C Publishing Community Group and of its Accessibility Task Force. She graduated in Digital Humanities at the University of Pisa, with a specialization in Digital Publishing.

Ted van der Togt is a researcher at the KB, national library of the Netherlands. His current field is digital accessibility of library services. In the Netherlands the national library is not only responsible for the collection and availability of Dutch publications (millions of books, newspapers and magazines, both in printed and digital formats), but also for the digital infrastructure for all public libraries. Accessibility of e-book services is an important topic, especially with the implementation of European Accessibility Act in the near future.
Together with universities and accessibility organisations, the KB is researching both technological developments as how users with a print disability can benefit from those.
In the past Ted work at several organisations, often at web technologies and/or accessibility of digital publications.

 

Learn more about the ABELab Project

MTM (the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media) is developing a fully automated production process for creating books with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) content as talking books with synthetic speech. They are doing this by combining the open source tool MathCAT with commercial components into a cohesive system.

Tim Arborealis is production manager for talking books at the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media (MTM). With a background in astrophysics, their primary focus is making books with STEM content accessible. For the past year they have been working on translating MathCAT into the Nordic languages and building it into MTM:s talking book production process.

Karl Adam Tiderman is system owner and deputy head of IT at the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media (MTM). He is mainly responsible for the strategic planning and the daily management of MTM’s production and distribution environment. Among this, he is responsible for the integration of MathCAT into MTM current systems.

Learn more about MTM, The Swedish Agency for Accessible Media

To promote reading with young adults in The Netherlands, reading tech startup Immer collaborated with public broadcaster VPRO to implement digital social reading in a new way. In this session, Immer’s Niels ’t Hooft will present the approach and first results of the Club Lees app.

A long-time entrepreneur and writer of both novels and videogames, Niels ’t Hooft (1980) is the co-founder and CEO of Immer Systems BV, where he leads a team of 7. He lives and works in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Immer won the ContentShift Startup of the Year Award 2022 (DE) and the Renew the Book Innovation Award 2021 (NL), and was a finalist of the Futurebook Startup of the Year Award 2023 (UK). Immer recently shipped the first version of the Immer Reading System, which helps any digital platform to offer the world’s best reading experience.

Explore the Immer app

Thorium is a free and open-source software application for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Thorium has become one of the most popular reading systems for several mainstream and specialised publication formats, such as EPUB, DAISY, audiobooks, Divina comic books, PDF. Thorium aims to offer one the most user-friendly and most accessible reading experience, compatible with a variety of screen readers and assistive technologies. Thorium supports the LCP DRM technology which is a cost-effective content protection solution suitable for publication purchases as well as time-limited loans. Thorium handles a wide range of languages and scripts, including right-to-left Arabic and Hebrew, and more recently Japanese vertical writing mode.

New exciting features are being released in 2024, notably the long-awaited content annotation functionality. Join this presentation to learn more!

A presentation by Daniel Weck, software engineer working with EDRLab and the DAISY Consortium to build solutions in the space of digital publishing and accessible media.

Learn more about Thorium Reader

We are inviting a selection of companies to present their new projects:

• NetGalley—Maria Bodmer will discuss how publishers can use the service to curate even more successful promotions for their books using early data.
• Bulle Studio—Lucien Doyen will detail their Bulle software, which is aimed at helping publishers with manga/webtoon translation and lettering.
• DRMInside – Taeyhun Kim will introduce Web-X DRM, their Web Content protection technology.

Closing remarks by EDRLab President Virginie Clayssen.

Please stay for the cocktail, during which you’ll be able to meet other participants and prepare future partnerships.