The London Book Fair (LBF) has announced a series of new partnerships and initiatives designed to open up new rights opportunities at the fair and nurture new conversations and collaborations between publishers and other media professionals.

The first ‘Creative Industries Day’ will take place on Thursday 16th April (Olympia in London) and sees LBF welcome a host of visitors, speakers and delegations drawn from the worlds of film, interactive, games and app developers, as well as publishers of comics and graphic novels. These creative industries professionals will share their expertise on how intellectual property can be extended into new areas of the media. They will also get the chance to meet their peers in the publishing industry to discuss new and potential opportunities for collaboration at structured networking and matchmaking events throughout the day.

Publishing and aligned Creative Industries opportunities at the Fair will include: –

The Children’s Media Conference (CMC) Rights Exchange

LBF will host the second edition of the CMC Rights Exchange, a new market event that connects children’s publishers with multimedia developers and producers that will run throughout the day on Thursday 16 April in Olympia. Kicking off the day with a major keynote, the Rights Exchange curated by CMC, will run a full day of pre-booked meetings matching rights owners with content producers, developers and licensing professionals. This will be complemented by a number of themed seminars in the Children’s Hub throughout the day, which are free-to-attend for LBF visitors.

The first CMC Rights Exchange took place in November 2014 to great success, itself a spin-off of the well-established annual Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield in July, which brings together professionals from children’s media across all formats including TV, interactive media, games, licensing, toys, radio, books and magazines.

Greg Childs, CMC Editorial Director said: “The CMC Rights Exchange was developed as a direct result of demand from children’s publishers and television/ multimedia producers for a meeting place where they could build new partnerships around children’s IP. 

So it’s particularly pleasing to be able to bring the Rights Exchange concept to the heart of the international publishing community at the London Book Fair, and to offer opportunities for publishers to meet children’s production specialists to discuss multi-platform exploitation of their rights.”

Brand Licensing and LIMA

For the second year there will be a brand licensing lounge and exhibiting presence alongside Brand Licensing Magazines Total Licensing and Guide to Licensing World. LIMA, the ‘international’ trade association for the Brand Licensing industry, will once again be curating a programme of seminars around the opportunities across brand licensing and publishing.

Film & TV Producers Delegation (in partnership with Boudica Films)

Working in partnership with award-winning independent finance and production company Boudica films, LBF will welcome a delegation of film and TV producers to the fair. These producers will participate in a round of structured networking. This will help build deeper links between London’s vibrant film and publishing communities and identify projects suitable to make the leap from the page to the screen – and vice versa.

MIPJUNIOR

LBF is renewing its partnership with MIPJUNIOR, the world’s largest and most important showcase for kids’ programming in 2015. Under the partnership, publishers attending LBF will benefit from a special rate for the event in Autumn 2015 held at the Grand Hyatt Cannes, Hotel Martinez, while MIPJUNIOR will take part in the fair to take enquiries.

Gaming @ LBF in partnership with UKIE

LBF’s gaming pavilion will return to the fair for the second year, again in association with UKIE.  This year the pavilion is twice the size, and has a dedicated Interactive Theatre featuring panels and showcases from cutting edge Games creators.  The pavilion plays host to a range of developers, games publishers and creative professionals eager to explore collaborations between the gaming industry and the publishing industry.

Graphic Novels @ LBF in partnership with Sequential

LBF is delighted to be partnering with the iPad graphic novel app SEQUENTIAL to provide, for the first time, a dedicated area for one of the fastest growing areas of trade publishing – comics and graphic novels. The new pavilion will provide a home at the Fair for exciting international comics and graphic novel content and rights available for licensing and translation through a bespoke app designed by SEQUENTIAL. This will be supported by a series of seminars featuring key speakers from the world of comic and graphic novels in the dedicated Interactive Theatre. To celebrate LBF’s first Graphic Novel Pavilion, SEQUENTIAL will be releasing an enhanced digital version of the first-ever British graphic novel for adults – Posy Simmonds’ True Love – at the Fair.

Russell Willis, the founder of SEQUENTIAL, said, “We’re delighted to be working with the London Book Fair. SEQUENTIAL’s aim is to expand the market for graphic novels via the digital presentation and distribution of the best examples of the form, and this fits perfectly with LBF’s decision to recognise the growth and exciting potential of comics and graphic novels with this new Pavilion.”

BAFTA Rocliffe

LBF is proud to renew its association with the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum through a competition aimed at supporting emerging screenwriting talent for children’s media, which culminates in a trip to MIPJUNIOR for one finalist. To celebrate this, LBF will be welcoming film and television writers into the Fair for events and seminars.

Curtis Brown

World-leading talent agency Curtis Brown will reflect the themes underlying Creative Industries day in their event in the Media Across All Formats seminar streams. Their Thursday event, ‘Differences in adapting for film, TV, TV and games’ will convene a panel of experts to draw out the essential qualities of a successful cross-media adaptation.

The Social Network: YouTubers, Vlogger and Bloggers

This year, following the popularity of Booktubers within the Insights Programme, The London Book Fair will welcome stars of new media in the form of the inaugural Social Network for vloggers and bloggers across all spheres. This follows a year in which the stars of YouTube also became stars of publishing cementing the key role that vloggers play as a rich seam of content across children’s and adult publishing while also celebrating the influence of bloggers. The lounge will provide space for these essential content creators to film content, blog about their experience of LBF and network with the publishing industry and one another.

The lounge will also host a ‘matchmaking service’ for publishers and content creators interested in entering the world of publishing. Luigi Bonomi says of the new initiative: “Publishers have a great opportunity to capitalise on the abundance of creative content that this now established medium has delivered.  I’m delighted to see vloggers taking their rightful place in the leading hub for creators.”

Jacks Thomas, Director, The London Book Fair, said: “The publishing industry proves itself again and again to be flexible and intent on taking every advantage of creative approaches to content. With the enabling short cuts of digital advances, the opportunities to exploit IP and to discover the full potential of content – whether coming from books or being adapted into books from other media – is immense.

Both books as a medium and London as a creative industries hub make this Creative Industries Day at The London Book Fair an obvious aspect of the evolution of the book fair which reflects the energy and appetite for opportunity which characterise publishing.