If he enjoys living in interesting times, then Stephen Lotinga has certainly chosen the right moment to become CEO of the UK’s Publishers Association (PA).
Like the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and similar national publishing trade organizations—called chambers in some countries—the PA is an advocacy hub, if you will, for the industry’s interests. The UK’s association is particularly robust. Its membership comprises more than 100 companies with a reported combined revenue of some £4.3 billion (US$5.6 billion), an estimated 35 percent of that digital.
And why is Lotinga’s timing so interesting? He became the PA’s chief in mid-January, succeeding Richard Mollet in the job just weeks before the announcement of the results of the Brexit referendum on the UK’s membership in the European Union. Now, as things have played out in that vote to leave the EU, it’s Lotinga who’s in the driver’s seat as this unprecedented sinkhole opens in the road ahead.
Happily, Lotinga knows his way around governmental roadblocks. He was director of communications for MP Nick Clegg, the UK’s former Deputy Prime Minister. Before that, he was executive director for external affairs and strategy at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO); managing director with the marketing giant Edelman; and partner with the PR agency Bell Pottinger.
He’ll be speaking in October at Frankfurt’s The Markets: Global Publishing Summit, a conference in which the UK is one of seven major markets in focus. And so far, he’s doing a great job, in tumultuous times, of what once was called “keeping the car in the road.” As the reality of the Brexit bombshell sinks in, he has written of something with which many Americans can identify: “I suspect I’m not the only one who has asked themselves over the last few weeks how our democracy became so full of fury and lacking in apparent wisdom.
He’s calling on the industry that the PA leads (or herds) to remember that book publishing may be one of the most direly needed elements of the way forward. We think the PA is lucky to have Lotinga’s hand on the wheel right now, and he is well worth heeding: “We should not underestimate just how important the role that publishers play will be in helping to bring a fractured society back together. When Roosevelt spoke of the need for wise choices in democracy, he went on to talk of how ‘the real safeguard of democracy is education.’ The role that publishers play in advancing knowledge, empowering discussion, and promoting values and ideas will be fundamental in helping the UK move beyond Brexit and towards a new beginning. We must now accept what has happened and play a leading role in defining what comes next.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
