Publishing and educating beyond borders is a key mission of the NYU Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts. For the last 11 years, I have been enormously honored to work with the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) to bring our publishing faculty and thought leaders to Sharjah to present a training program for Arab publishers, now including African publishing professionals too.

This year, the program took place on Saturday, November 2, the day before the start of the Sharjah International Book Fair Publishers Conference, at the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce. We addressed three critically important topics every publisher needs to know: “Practical AI for the Publishing Marketplace”; “Reaching Communities of Book Lovers through Tiktok”; and “Mastering Instagram, Facebook, Reels, Threads and Other Meta Platforms for Publishing Profit." I strongly believe that these topics will help publishers do business faster and better and convert social media into sales.

Tackling AI in a way that is practical, interactive, and focused on what is most important to publishers now, today, is not always easy, and I’m very excited about the strategy and speaker program planned for our program in Sharjah. Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer and executive vice president international for HarperCollins Publishers, presented an overview of what we have learned since the arrival of AI and how book publishers can best utilize AI technology and opportunities to enhance their businesses, utilize their staff to best advantage, and protect their assets.

Using AI responsibility and productively is still a mystery to many publishers, but so are TikTok and Meta. How do we best deploy these social media giants to build businesses, find new audiences, and increase sales? To answer these questions and provide an inside perspective, I invited two social media leaders in the MENA region to join our conversation.

Joana Jamil, who manages partnerships in the book and cultural areas for Meta in the region, addressed how publishers can best use Facebook, Instagram, Reels and Threads as primary and highly effective tools to build their social media presence, extend their network, and, most importantly, strategically engage book buying audiences. To learn how TikTok (and specifically BookTok) is expanding its creator universe and attracting readers to a wide range of genres and authors we heard from Mo Harb, head of media partnerships-MENA. He conveyed to book publishers how best to use BookTok to support their authors, promote their books, and convert fandom to sales.

Providing a comprehensive look at AI, Meta, and BookTok all in one day was a challenge, but an exciting one. Discussions like these are ones we have every day in our publishing classrooms at NYU. In fact, we are eager to expand the dialogue even further and last year launched a new, one-week global executive education course on campus at NYU. The next NYU Advanced Publishing Institute (NYU API) will run from January 6-10, 2025, focusing on leadership and management strategies for book publishing professionals.

Sharing business strategies and perspectives on a global level is part of our mission. No matter where you live in the world, whether you are a small independent publisher or work in a large corporation, you need to understand the forces that are shaping how books are discovered and sold. Join us in Sharjah and in New York to take part in the ongoing conversation!

Andrea Chambers is associate dean of the Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts at the NYU School of Professional Studies. For more information about the NYU Advanced Publishing Institute, please email nyu.api@nyu.edu.

Chantal Restivo-Alessi, Joana Jamil, and Mo Harb participated in the Sharjah Professional Program on November 3rd as part of the round table discussions on the topic Using AI for Publishing Efficiencies.