The European publishing landscape faces unprecedented challenges as digital technologies reshape how books are created, distributed, and consumed. A new EU-funded initiative called ThinkPub aims to equip small and medium-sized publishers with the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in this evolving environment. Ed Nawotka spoke with Aljaž Koprivnikar, head of international cooperation at Slovenian publishing house Beletrina Academic Press and coordinator of the ThinkPub project, about what publishers can expect from the project.
Can you explain what ThinkPub is?
ThinkPub stands for “thinking publishing,” and it’s basically a collaboration project of 12 partners led by the Slovenian publishing house Beletrina, whose CEO Alma Čaušević Klemenčič helped launch the project. The project enables the European publishing sector to better adapt to the new reality and digital disruption, making the sector more sustainable and creating new opportunities and jobs. It’s financed by the European Union’s Creative Europe fund.
It’s addressing the future of European publishing, especially small and mid-scale publishers, helping them to better adapt to the reality that we are facing, but also the reality of tomorrow. We’re creating a digital library of learning objects which publishers and interested audiences can access. It will cover a full range of topics related to publishing.
What specific challenges are European publishers facing?
The traditional publishing model is not viable anymore if you want to thrive and not be forgotten in a really big field of publishing houses. Reading habits are changing, and especially with new technologies that are coming, we need to adapt.
In Slovenia, for example, we don’t have big publishing houses. We only have small ones, all fighting over a limited number of readers. We have to adjust our workflow to this new reality, which means we have to use different approaches in content creation, in marketing… if we don’t do this, the market will basically swallow us and we will be forgotten.
How does the ThinkPub platform work in practice?
We’re creating a web platform, a digital library of learning objects, where we post materials which are free of charge. We are also participating in major industry events and local ones—and we record all these sessions and put them online on the digital library. We aim to have a total of 350 objects uploaded by the end of the project in January 2028.
What are the key themes ThinkPub focuses on?
The project focuses on five central themes. The first is reading—habits are changing and we need to know who is reading; second, there’s innovation in management and marketing—especially for small and medium-sized publishers; the third is emerging technologies—particularly AI; the fourth covers legal questions—everything from authors’ rights to translators’ rights; and finally, translation—because we’re working on a continent with many languages, not just the official 24 languages of the EU, but many local ones that are important to preserve in publishing as well.
Who are your consortium partners and what do they bring to the project?
This kind of project really represents diversity because we have partners from all across Europe. The consortium includes: the Federation of European Publishers; Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez (organizers of the annual Readmagine conference); EDRLab, known for its Digital Publishing Summit; Ruediger Wischenbart Content & Consulting; the Norwegian Reading Centre at the University of Stavanger; Next Page Foundation; Beat Technology; the Polish Chamber of Books; the Limassol Book Fair; and the technology and design agency Thinking.
ThinkPub will present the results of its first year of research, in a session titled Learning How to Innovate on Thursday, October 16, at 5 p.m. on the Innovation Stage in Hall 4.0.
