IPA President, Hugo Setzer, talks to Trasvin Jittidecharak, Secretary General of the ASEAN Book Publishers Association, and founder of Silkworm Books in Thailand, about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected publishers in the region and what the future may hold.
Following the widely reported attempts by President Trump to prevent the release of Ambassador John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, the IPA has declared its full backing for the American publisher of the book, Simon & Schuster.
At 1pm CEST on Thursday 18 June 2020, watch IPA President, Hugo Setzer, talk to Maria Pallante, CEO of the Association of American Publishers about how publishers have reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic and how they are looking to the future.
On 10 June, the Bulgarian Parliament adopted a proposal to reduce VAT on several goods and services, including books (only print), from the standard 20% rate to a reduced rate of 9%.
The measure, which will enter into force as of the 1st of July, is part of the government’s recovery plan from the COVID-19 crisis. It is meant to be a temporary initiative, until the end of 2021. It is nonetheless very significant, as Bulgaria was one of two EU Members States to never have applied reduced VAT on books (the other being Denmark) – whereas the other 25 have a reduced or super-reduced (or even zero) rate for print books, as do the UK and EEA countries Norway and Iceland.
Moreover, 18 Member States apply a reduced rate to digital books. The possibility to apply reduced VAT to print books has been enshrined in EU legislation since many years, whereas only in 2018 was the legal framework modified to include digital publications. Two Member States (Spain and Estonia) and the UK adopted or sped up the adoption of reduced rates on digital publications as a crisis-related measure.
Thanks to Enrico Turrin of FEP for this update.
Close scrutiny showed a more complex but also more positive answer for both the UK and US.
IPA D&I envoy, Michiel Kolman interviews Elsevier’s Simon Holt and Springer Nature’s Kirsty Bone about their experiences of having a disability and working in the publishing industry. This is a long but fascinating read.
October and the first days of November were again very busy, with visits to four different countries and three book fairs in the course of three weeks.