London Fair: AI, access, workflows

At the London Book Fair in March 2026, publishers kept returning to three operational questions: how to use artificial intelligence, how to build accessible books, and how to cut editorial friction. (sixredmarbles.com) The fair ran March 10 to 12 at Olympia London, and Six Red Marbles said those themes surfaced across scheduled meetings, walk-in conversations, and a Tech Theatre session that drew about 110 participants. (booksellerevents.org.uk; sixredmarbles.com) London Book Fair’s 2026 seminar program also put artificial intelligence, rights, licensing, translation, and access on the formal agenda, with hundreds of speakers and sessions across the three-day event. (publishingperspectives.com) In publishing, artificial intelligence usually means software that speeds up repetitive work such as tagging, drafting metadata, checking content, or generating image descriptions, not software that replaces editors. Six Red Marbles said the strongest conversations were about “practical” uses that reduce manual work while keeping human oversight in place. (sixredmarbles.com) That caution showed up elsewhere at the fair. Cambridge University Press and Assessment said copies of *Don’t Steal This Book*, a protest object listing 10,000 authors’ names, appeared on many stands as publishers pushed back on proposals that would let artificial intelligence developers train on copyrighted works without permission. (cambridge.org) Rights and licensing teams were discussing the same pressure from the business side. Copyright Clearance Center used its London Book Fair programming to argue that publishers should treat artificial intelligence as a licensing market, not only as a technology problem. (copyright.com) Accessibility was the second recurring theme, and in publishing that means making a book usable for readers with print disabilities through features such as structured digital text, image descriptions, and compatible ebook files. The Accessible Books Consortium says publishers should build those features into EPUB 3 files and pass accessibility information through the supply chain. (accessiblebooksconsortium.org) That focus on “born accessible” books has moved from specialist practice toward production planning. One London Book Fair panel described access as infrastructure that includes editing, translation, rights, format adaptation, and distribution, not only the final file. (publishingperspectives.com) The third theme, smarter editorial workflows, is the least flashy and the most concrete. Six Red Marbles framed it as reducing friction from creation to delivery so teams can handle tighter schedules, multiple formats, quality control, and scale with fewer handoffs. (sixredmarbles.com; sixredmarbles.com) The setting added some end-of-era symbolism. Six Red Marbles called the 2026 show the final London Book Fair at Olympia before the event moves to Excel next year, which made a workflow-heavy conversation feel tied to a venue change as well as a technology shift. (sixredmarbles.com) What emerged from London was less a single announcement than a shared to-do list: use artificial intelligence where it saves time, keep copyright and trust in view, and make accessibility part of standard production rather than cleanup work at the end. (sixredmarbles.com; cambridge.org; accessiblebooksconsortium.org)