SPN 2022 conference program announced

The program for the 2022 Small Press Network (SPN) annual Independent Publishing Conference, which runs from 24–26 November, has been announced.

The conference, which will run as a hybrid event taking place in person at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne and streamed simultaneously online, will follow the usual format of ‘research day’, ‘industry day’ and ‘workshop day’ across the three days.

The two keynote speakers are associate professor Richard Jean So of McGill University and public policy expert Ben Eltham of Monash University. So, whose research focuses on the ‘pervasive and persistence of white supremacy within the publishing industry’, will speak at the ‘research day’ event which will centre around the theme of ‘Publishing Futures’. The first day will feature presentations on a range of topics including hybrid publishing, BookTok and audiobooks.

Eltham will deliver the keynote speech at the ‘industry day’ event, which will begin with an opening address by Minister of the Arts Tony Burke. The second day of the conference will focus on evolving cultural policy as an overreaching subject, with panel sessions on topics including environmental sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and the Nielsen BookScan market report.

‘After running the conference entirely online for two years we are very much looking forward to welcoming our colleagues from across the industry back to the Wheeler Centre,’ said SPN general manager Tim Coronel. ‘But we also recognise the advantages of online access, so we’ll be making full use of the available technology so that participants can join us from anywhere.’

The winner of the 2022 SPN Book of the Year will be presented on Friday, 25 November at the conference as part of the Wheeler Centre’s Next Big Thing series.

For details of the full program, see the SPN website.

Category: Local news