The 15th Sharjah International Publishers Conference opened on Monday with an unusual format: 31 specialized roundtable workshops designed to move beyond keynote addresses and into concrete problem-solving for an industry grappling with rapid technological change and fragmented distribution networks.
The workshops, which preceded the Sharjah International Book Fair 2025, brought together publishers from six continents to address challenges ranging from children's book metadata in French-language African markets to building digital-first publishing houses in streaming economies. The conference's hands-on approach reflects mounting industry pressure to adapt quickly or risk obsolescence in an increasingly data-driven marketplace.
Among the most popular workshops were sessions hosted by Benas Berantas of the Book Smugglers literary agency of Vilnius, Lithuania, on selling rights from small markets. Berantas said the agency is seeing growing interest from publishers in small markets seeking to sell translation rights—a shift from the perception that rights sales are the domain of major markets alone. He noted particular enthusiasm from African publishers exploring how to enter the rights marketplace. "It used to be a perception that it's something that only big markets do, but now it's changing, so it's great that people want to try to sell books from Africa, from the Middle East, from small European countries," Berantas said.
Berantas, whose agency launched 8 years ago, emphasized practical fundamentals for breaking into rights sales: leveraging translation grants when available, preparing materials properly, and securing translators for target languages before pitching. He pointed to expanded digital networking opportunities as a game-changer. "You can do it digitally and find contacts online. You have communities, you have fellowships, which was not the case 15 years ago," Berantas said, contrasting today's landscape with his early Frankfurt Book Fair experiences eight years ago when he felt like he was trying to set up meetings by "picking up business cards that I found on the floor."
Small-market sellers face a unique challenge, according to Berantas: providing contextual groundwork that major-market players can skip. "When you come from a small market, you need to give them background—sometimes where the country is, a bit about its history and literature, and what the country is living through at the moment," he said. That context-setting can open doors, particularly for historical fiction and family sagas. For example, when it comes to Lithuanian titles, recent interest has been largely driven by the country's geopolitical position neighboring Russia, something that has become more relevant following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, Berantas believes that many publishers, especially those in Europe, have fatigue from being inundated with books from the U.S. and England, which has come as a result of the shift of many younger readers to reading in English, rather than in translation. "If you want to have unique books in your market, to have titles no one else has, you're going to have to find them, and books from small markets offer novelty and an opportunity," he said. "In this way, being 'from afar' really can pay off."
Simon de Jocas, president and owner of Montreal's Éditions Les 400 Coups, moderated a workshop on children's book publishing in French languages that drew participants primarily from African nations. "Together we talked about the complexities of a developing market structure, and our discussion quickly zeroed in on the fundamental building blocks of modern publishing: metadata, discoverability, and the power of unity," de Jocas said.
The group's key takeaway represented a philosophical shift. "The most important was avoiding waiting for ideal conditions and rather embracing a philosophy of actionable first steps," de Jocas noted.
Dr. Mohammed Ayesh, director of Al Fikr Al Jadeed Publishing House in Jordan, hosted a workshop titled "Factors That Make the Printed Book Irreplaceable," arguing that print's value extends beyond content to encompass design harmony. "The magic of print lies not only in its narrative but in the harmony of its elements—from content and design to layout and graphic presentation, even the type of paper chosen to suit the subject of the book," Ayesh said.
AI offers new opportunities
Mette Caserta, co-founder of Denmark's Fioranello Publishing, led a workshop on building publishing houses in streaming-only economies, bringing experience from a market where streaming now comprises half the publishing economy. Caserta detailed Denmark's evolution from just 20 audiobooks to its current digital maturity as a model for accelerated development. Her most resonant insight involved AI application beyond the typical translation discussions. Caserta made a case for using AI to slash internal operational costs and build leaner enterprises.
Distribution emerged as a persistent challenge across multiple workshops. Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Furaih, director of Obeikan Research, Publishing and Translation in Saudi Arabia, hosted a session exploring the book's journey to retail shelves. He explained that producing a single book involves more than 50 individuals with distribution representing "the common bottleneck in the book production chain." He framed publishing's distribution challenges as requiring industrial-scale innovative thinking, with his workshop serving as a collective brainstorming session on adapting strategies from other commercial sectors to the book market.
Wedha Stratesti, a project manager at Gramedia International, led a workshop demystifying market access to Indonesia for international publishers. Stratesti emphasized the conference's recurring value for forging global connections and addressed participants' core questions about identifying Indonesian publishers by genre specialization and understanding standard communication protocols. "The main advice I offered was the importance of initial research," Stratesti explained. "Even a preliminary review of a publisher's catalog can help determine thematic alignments.
Among other attendees speaking about the digital transformation were Laura Werle, founder of Snackz.ai, a Berlin-based startup that is offering solutions for automated workflows and whose latest project is a chat-based book search and recommendation tool for booksellers. "Right now, there is a consensus that online matchmaking and discovery tools for customers to find books that suit their needs and interests are inadequate. We're working to make it better," she said.
