Earlier this month, representatives from university presses and publishing houses across Latin America, Spain, and the U.S. convened at Princeton University Press for "From Latin America to the World: Publishing Today," a two-day conference examining the challenges and opportunities facing the industry. Hosted by Princeton University Press and the GESEI research group for independent publishing, the event brought together publishing professionals from Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Spain, the U.S., and Uruguay.
The morning panel, "The Gender Issue in Publishing: Gaps and Inequalities," featured publishing executives who highlighted persistent disparities despite some progress in recent years.
Christie Henry, director of Princeton University Press, noted that while publishing employs many women, leadership roles have historically been dominated by men. "Publishing has long had great populations of creative women on the teams. It just took a while—sometimes centuries—to have women in the positions of directorships," Henry said, noting that she became first woman to lead the press when she was appointed to her role in 2017. She went on to describe efforts at PUP to address these imbalances, including conducting regular compensation reviews focused on gender equity and seeking greater equity among staff gender demographics to leadership demographics.
Sayri Karp Mitastein, director of Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico, reported that her university press now has more women than men now working at the organization. "We fought for the same salary, to have the same opportunities. I think now we have a very nice team that has more commitment with the press," Mitastein said, describing the changes as a positive shift.
In Peru, the gender imbalance in publishing remains problematic. "Today, 72 percent of our authors are men and only 28 [percent] are women. While this is a meaningful improvement from 20 years ago when only five percent of our authors were women, we are still far from genuine gender parity," said Lizbeth Alvarado, head of Fondo Editorial Cayetano, the publishing house of Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.
Alvarado questioned why men publish more than women despite data showing that women read more. "Part of the answer lies in unequal access to time and opportunity, part of it lies in who holds the power to decide what gets published, and the reality is, those decisions are still made in most cases by men," she said.
At Grupo Planeta in Spain, the majority of editors are women, according to Carmen Esteban, editorial director for Planeta's Crítica and Ariel imprints, but "the corridors of power are all full of men." For Esteban, the "real glass ceiling" extends beyond workplace policies and into the family home: "Women take care of children, take care of parents. I don't know what you can do about that.”
Addressing AI
The late morning panel, "Publishing Today: Artificial Intelligence and Accessibility," explored how publishers are approaching AI and accessibility requirements, while protecting intellectual property and copyright.
Cathy Felgar, publishing operations director at Princeton University Press, said the press is approaching the topic very deliberately. "At PUP, we are considering the use of AI, but proceeding very cautiously because we don't want to expose our intellectual property to being scraped or trained in large language models or AI systems," Felgar said.
Despite these concerns, Felgar identified potential benefits in production processes, suggesting AI could help with writing alt text for accessibility purposes, structuring references, and even setting print runs by identifying patterns in sales data.
PUP has already updated its contracts to require authors to warrant their books are "original, human-created work" and to disclose any use of AI, said Inés ter Horst, director of intellectual property at PUP. The press has also added language to its copyright notice prohibiting the ingestion of any PUP content for AI purposes.
Alejandra González Barranco, director of Ediciones Tecnológico de Monterrey, described how the press—which represents one of the leading higher education institutions in Mexico—has already developed ethical guidelines for AI. "We believe that technology can facilitate processes and help us to understand information," González Barranco said, but noted that AI "should not be considered an author or coauthor of research as it is a technological tool and cannot assume integrity."
Édgar García Valencia from Universidad Veracruzana added that Mexican publishers are already utilizing AI through a metadata management system called SIME. "The tool or the metadata management are using ChatGPT as an app to make summaries and automatically generate BISAC codes and THEMA categories," García Valencia said.
Other institutions are just beginning to address the issue. Lia Castillo of Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, based in Santiago de Surco, Peru, noted that her press is still in the early stages of exploring AI tools. "We're just starting out, examining our guidelines and contracts," she said.
On accessibility, Felgar detailed Princeton's preparations for the European Accessibility Act, which takes effect this June and mandates that a range of products and services sold within the EU comply with accessibility requirements for people with disabilities. Felgar described how the press categorizes its backlist ebooks according to compliance levels. "We've sorted all that out," she explained. "There are three new codes specifying the reason that an ebook is not fully accessible."
García Valencia expressed concern that AI discussions might be overwhelming accessibility efforts in Latin America. "I think the AI is winning the publishing agenda over accessibility, at least in Mexico," she said. "We have about 80 days to comply before the European Accessibility Act becomes a law." She said that prioritizing accessibility is a necessity for all and has implications beyond mere compliance: "If you don't do that for people with disabilities now, think what you want to read when you are 70 or 80. Do you want to pass your last years of your life struggling to read what you enjoy to read?"
