The ongoing global public health crisis deeply challenged all sectors of publishing in 2021. Yet industry stakeholders remained determined in the pursuit of renewal and recovery.
2021 Year-in-Review: International Publishing News
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Over a year of vaccines and variants, COVID-19 played hide-and-seek around the world. After a devastating pandemic year in 2020, any return to normal was fitful, as Delta and Omicron crashed party after party.
The ongoing global public health crisis deeply challenged all sectors of publishing in 2021. Yet industry stakeholders remained determined in the pursuit of renewal and recovery.
In the final weeks of 2021, Velocity of Content is looking back at the past twelve months of programs.
Special guests include Bodour Al Qasimi, founder and CEO, Kalimat Group in Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates, who currently serves as president of the International Publishers Association; Paula Gori, secretary-general of the European Digital Media Observatory; Dr. Michiel Kolman, Senior Vice President and Academic Ambassador, Elsevier, and former IPA President; and industry analyst Rudiger Wischenbart, author of Global 50.
“Oxford Languages have chosen vax as the word of the year for 2021,” says CCC’s Christopher Kenneally.
“On the short list for that lexicographical distinction was certainly languishing – defined as ‘failing to make progress’ as well as ‘feeble or weak.’ While many have felt 2021 was a time for languishing, global publishing did not,” Kenneally notes.
“Publishing got up and went about the business of innovating. It confronted the insidious threats of disinformation and fake news. And from behind the clouds of monopoly, authors, publishers, and consumers could glimpse rays of judicial and regulatory relief.”
