Publishers' Forum to herald LABAF 2011

AS part of its13th Lagos Book & Art Festival which holds from the 18th till the 20th of November 2011, Committee For Relevant Art (CORA) hereby announces its plans for the 2nd Publishers' Forum which will hold on the 17th of November as a part of the 13th Lagos Book & Art Festival.The Publishers' Forum provides a concentrated space for key publishers in Nigeria to gain critical insight into their current operations within the context of the challenges facing their industry, brainstorm on their findings and identify key steps that can be taken as individual businesses or as a collective to improve their bottom line. At CORA, we picture ourselves as midwives to the different facets of the creative industries in Nigeria, therefore what we hope to achieve through the publisher's forum is the blossoming of the nation's book industry.For this year's Publisher's Forum, we have chosen to focus on the theme: THE BOOK IN THE AGE OF THE MICROCHIP in appreciating the vast potential that digital technologies hold for empowering publishers in developing economies like ours to dramatically scale up their businesses.Within the four hours marked up for the business forum, we intend the participants to add value to their businesses through the intervention of key facilitators, critical feedback on their processes, input on the most challenging areas they have to deal with and useful networking.The Publishers forum will be followed from 5pm to 6.30pm by a conversation (open to the public) tagged: 'WOOING THE MASS MARKET' where two publishers will share from their current work and their future plans, by discussing a selection from their publishing list. This year, we will have two publishers discuss their efforts at publishing literary journals and what mileage the internet afforded them in their efforts. A digital display of past editions of their journals will be presented. The discussions will be brought to a close with a cocktail.A most apt way to describe the Publishers' Forum is to call it a 'focus group' or a strategy session with key facilitators as guide. The forum is targeted at principals of publishing houses who seek to grow their market and are willing to engage in creative thinking towards identifying strategies that can make this possible for them whether within a collective or through their individual operations. Our expectation is that cogent strategies would emerge from the session which can be immediately implemented or could be built upon in future.
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