Transcript: Karine Pansa Becomes IPA President

Interview with Karine Pansa

For podcast release Monday, January 16, 2023

KENNEALLY: Although the International Publishers Association was founded in 1896, the global organization continues to admit new member countries, most recently including three African nations and one from Central America. Also new for IPA is its president, Karine Pansa of Brazil, who took office for a two-year term on January 1st.

Welcome to Copyright Clearance Center’s podcast series. I’m Christopher Kenneally for Velocity of Content.

In addition to serving as IPA president, Karine Pansa is the publishing director of Girassol Brasil, a children’s book publisher based in São Paulo. She was previously president of the Brazilian Book Chamber and sits on the boards of the Brazilian National Book and Reading Plan and the Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind. Karine Pansa joins me now from São Paulo. Welcome to the program and congratulations on your election as IPA president. Bem-vindo e parabéns.

PANSA: Thank you, Chris. Very good to be here with you.

KENNEALLY: Well, we appreciate your taking the time to join us. And as you begin your role as IPA president, tell us about your goals for the next two years.

PANSA: Well, Chris, I want to build on the incredible work of our recent presidents and to continue to bring the whole book sector closer together. I also want to focus on data. That is really important for me. And if we are to communicate about the industry successfully, then we need reliable data. That’s what I do really believe. Many major markets have this, but there are many other countries in the world which do not have, and I would like to help to fix that. IPA’s long-standing priorities, copyright and freedom to publish, will of course remain in my role of things that need to be done during my presidency as well.

KENNEALLY: So, Karine Pansa, do you have special concerns for reading and publishing in 2023?

PANSA: Yes, I do. I do. So as a publisher, there are obviously things that are concerning to us – first of all, the increasing price of energy, freight, paper costs. These all three affect our business hugely. The ongoing challenges to copyright and freedom to publish are also very much our concern.

And as a publisher, we have seen that many of our major markets were booming during and after COVID. There are also surveys that can show that people want to read. People want to dedicate more time to reading. Let’s help them – the less fortunate markets to catch up. As a Brazilian, our sector is so dynamic, and we publish such great books, as the Brazilian SDG Book Club has been a huge success, and the books will now be in São Paulo libraries as a collection soon. So the government is buying those lists, which is a huge help for the market and for the list itself. So why we cannot get more children to reading about the goals – that’s very, very good.

As a woman, there’s so much positive thought about empowering women. You should have felt the energy in the room in the 33rd International Publishers Congress when all the women in the room gathered on the stage. It was fantastic. It was really amazing. We have every reason to be very optimistic.

KENNEALLY: You mentioned the 33rd International Publishers Congress, which took place recently in Jakarta. You were the chair of the programming committee. So share with us a little bit more about some of the highlights of that program.

PANSA: You know, it is very hard to look at something that you have worked for so long objectively. We obviously built our program around our theme – that was Reading Matters: Embracing the Future. It was also very satisfying to hear common themes to come through in most topics. The pandemic reminded us why reading matters. So many people turned to reading those difficult days. So many markets saw bumping in sales, but so many children in poor countries without access to books in their schools were deprived from being able to read. In many parts of the world, children are still catching up. This is something that concerns us all.

So when discussing freedom to publish and hearing about difficult situations in Thailand and Iran, you understand how much reading matters to those people. My panel on children’s publishing kept coming back to the need to create that love for reading in children. We had a dedicated panel on the evolution of reading rates and how reading has to compete with other forms of entertainment. While reading was always emphasized, the discussions always turned to the future. Where are the opportunities? How can we do things better?

But talking about specific highlights, I can think of three. I think that it was really special to see Asoke Ghosh recognized by his peers. He has been connected to IPA for 50 years. And for the others, our two keynotes – so hearing the WIPO director-general, Daren Tang, to speak so positively about the role of publishing and value of the cooperation between IPA and WIPO was really important to us. And the second keynote, Natsuo Kirino, on freedom of expression, was gripping and articulated so well the threats of freedom of expression – how it faces nowadays. it was fantastic as well.

KENNEALLY: Also in Jakarta, the Brazilian Book Chamber received the inaugural IPA Innovation in Publishing Award for a very special project which it initiated during the COVID crisis. Tell me about that and how it might be a model for other countries or in other regions.

PANSA: I was so happy to see CBL’s work recognized by their peers worldwide. Conexão Livraria is an ambitious project that sets out to connect independent bookstores with book wholesalers and technology platforms to facilitate the delivery of books to customers in a matter of hours, not days. This project was born of the COVID pandemic in Brazil, where it soon became obvious that small and medium-sized bookstores didn’t have the technical or logistical capacity to supply increased demand. Rather than lose customers to online bookshops, Conexão Livraria allowed customers to walk into a bookstore and order books that are not physically in the store easily and confidently. They could receive the books in a few hours. This was a game-changer for small and medium-sized bookstores in Brazil.

KENNEALLY: Karine Pansa, it’s a special concern for you – accessibility in publishing. We know that only 10% of published content is accessible to print-disabled readers. What is IPA doing to encourage greater accessibility?

PANSA: IPA has a dedicated working group in accessibility that is co-chaired by Hugo Setzer and Laura Brady. So we are helping our members by sharing best practices and supporting initiatives like the Accessible Books Consortium from WIPO. The work also feeds into other initiatives, so that Africa Publishing Innovation Fund had an accessibility focus this last year which has included training on African publishers. There’s a lot to do with the European Accessibility Act that is coming into force in 2025, and that will affect not only just European publishers, but outsiders that want to sell books in Europe as well.

KENNEALLY: And, Karine Pansa, the IPA has led publishing’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 with support for Ukrainian colleagues and condemnation of the Russian government. So what roles do Ukrainian publishers play in the resistance to Russian occupation?

PANSA: That’s very kind of you to say, Chris, but I think there have been many organizations in our sector that have reacted to the invasion of Ukraine. Our Ukrainian colleagues are just amazing – amazing. They are still working, showing us that they will not be stopped by war. They are doing this from other countries as well as from home, where the war continues. They are doing this with power cuts. It’s been a huge task. And they deserve our respect, our support, and we will continue to do that and what else can be done to support them. There are many channels through which assistance can flow to the Ukrainian people, and we stand solidly with our Ukrainian members at this difficult time into the future.

KENNEALLY: Karine Pansa, president of the International Publishers Association, thank you for joining me on the program. Obrigado.

PANSA: Thank you, Chris. It was my pleasure to be here with you today.

KENNEALLY: That’s all for now. Our producer is Jeremy Brieske of Burst Marketing. You can subscribe to the program wherever you go for podcasts, and please do follow us on Twitter and on Facebook. You can also find Velocity of Content on YouTube as part of the Copyright Clearance Center channel. I’m Christopher Kenneally for CCC.