This year has proven to be a pivotal one for the Book Industry Study Group: the trade association turned 50, and appointed a new executive director. Next month, BISG will celebrate these two milestones at its Book Publishing Next Forum, followed by its first-ever gala reception at the New York Historical in Manhattan.

Outgoing executive director Brian O’Leary, who was the recipient of PW’s 2025 Frederic G. Melcher Lifetime Achievement Award, led BISG for 10 years before retiring in June. His successor, Allison Belan, hopes both to maintain some continuity and be an agent of change.

Prior to joining BISG, Belan was director of strategic innovation and services at Duke University Press, where she spent 22 years. In her most recent role, she was responsible for helping Duke meet new accessibility regulations, and was also involved in investigating outsourcing Duke’s warehousing and distribution functions—two subjects, she says, on which BISG is the authority. As a result, she often turned to BISG for educational resources and more.

While she shares O’Leary’s curiosity and enthusiasm about publishing, Belan believes that given her background in project management and production, she will likely put more emphasis on standardizing and optimizing production methods across the industry in order to speed up publishing processes. With the time saved, she says, publishers can focus on new opportunities.

Belan would also like to build on a number of existing BISG programs to create “an early warning system” to identify potential issues that could impact the supply chain. She doesn’t think tariffs and international supply chain issues, for instance, will disappear anytime soon.

“Things that were considered settled in the global marketplace for decades are now subject to rapid, unexpected change,” Belan says. She credits BISG with alerting the industry to the challenges of European Union Deforestation Regulation and the European Accessibility Act. She would like to take the notification process a step further and enlist BISG members to give the American publishing industry as much notice as possible of impending policy changes, so that companies can come up with solutions.

In her conversations with BISG members, she says, the biggest topic continues to be how AI will impact the business. “AI was the first thing that came up in virtually every conversation,” she explains. “There is a real hunger to move on from discussing the possibilities or threats of AI and move to practical approaches to AI’s within book publishing.”

To help BISG get a handle on the emerging opportunities and challenges AI presents, last month the organization teamed up with BookNet Canada on a second industry AI survey. Results will be out this fall, and Belan says she is interested to see how they have changed from the 2025 survey, which was the first of its kind.

Engaging AI is crucial to publishing’s future, Belan believes, since it is spreading more quickly than any other technology in the past, including e-books. “To understand AI today is not to understand AI in publishing in six months or in two years,” she says. “Building the ability to respond rapidly to developments in that space will be critical.”

While BISG has made tremendous progress under O’Leary in focusing more on digital issues and the supply chain, Belan feels both topics could use still more attention. As the importance of metadata continues to increase, for instance, Belan says even the physical supply chain “rides on these digital rails.” At the same time, she adds, BISG won’t overlook its long-standing committees involved with industry standards and best practices.

Belan is looking forward to meeting more industry members in September at the Book Publishing Next Forum, where presenters including Belan and keynote speaker Lora Cecere of Supply Chain Insights will address various industry topics. The gala afterward will serve not only as a celebration of BISG’s 50th anniversary but also as a fundraiser; Belan hopes it will generate enough contributions to help BISG return to doing research in an industry sorely lacking in data.

Having never served on a BISG committee, Belan acknowledges she is coming in as something of an outsider. In many ways, she believes, this is a boon. “This gives me the opportunity to initiate conversations across the industry,” she says, “and invite people to get to know me better, and to share their perspectives to help me get to a place where BISG is contributing all the value that is possible.”