The Frankfurt Book Fair, which ends tomorrow, is more than just the world’s largest publishing event
With their industry fast going paperless and e-oriented, publishers still insist that teleconferencing will never replace face-to-face business. Publishers just love meeting each other, especially at the Frankfurt Book Fair every October. It is the largest book fair in the world in terms of the number of publishers who attend. This year’s fair, which started on October 6, ends tomorrow.
The first modern Frankfurter Buchmesse was held in 1949, but there have been book fairs at Frankfurt for 500 years, since not long after Johann Gutenberg invented his press. In 1949, in the aftermath of the World War, the Buchmesse was held in St Paul’s Church, with a modest area of 1,000 sq metres. Now, the fair covers 172,000 sq metres, or about 24 football fields, and any publisher of any standing anywhere in the world visits year after year.
The fair is organised by a private company, the Ausstellungs-und Messe Gmbh, owned by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association. Last year it drew 8,000 publishers from over 100 countries, and over 300,000 people connected with the publishing world. There were 400,000 titles on display, 125,000 new and the rest from the backlist (i.e., in print but not new). Millions of euros’ worth of business was transacted, and promises made that amounted to much larger sums that are difficult to quantify. This year it’s expected that nearly half a million people will have visited.
I first visited the fair in 1979 and, except 1986, have been there every year since.
In 1979 there were no escalators and no underground rail. There was just one immense hall for international publishers. It was the size of four football fields, and had one entrance and exit. Smoking was not forbidden and Croatians were allowed to demonstrate on Friday at a stipulated hour in front of the Yugoslavian stand. Indians were given a subsidy to rent a stand (perhaps they still get it) and Russians were spending roubles to buy from us. Eastern Bloc dissenters were smuggling out manuscripts to have them published in the West. Manuscripts had to be good, not just saleable. You could spend the evening listening to Harry Belafonte, Paul McCartney and Diana Ross performing in the adjoining Festhalle.
My friend the Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was shot at for publishing Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, but he was at Frankfurt despite the wound. Anna Porter, the legendary Canadian publisher, wrote her debut detective novel set in the Buchmesse. It was not unusual to see Claudia Schiffer, Helmut Kohl, Orhan Pamuk or Mohammed Ali walk past you without a securityman in sight.
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The fair is still fun, but times have changed. You can now make more deals over breakfast than you could then over evening drinks. Assisted by escalators and walkways you can briskly walk 20 km a day and still be fresh to talk about the risks of a seven-figure advance.
There are more parties now. Though the most sought-after Bertelsmann party was cancelled last year due to cost-cutting, there were other publishers celebrating an anniversary or throwing a party to show that they were not as affected by recession as their competitors.
If you are not invited to any of the evening dos you can still go to the Frankfurter Hoff, a hotel where chairmen and MDs meet over sekt, a sparkling wine, or head for Casablanka Bar, where youngsters meet over Pils beer.
Frankfurt looks forward to the book fair. Taxi-driver, bartender, restaurant owner or retired banker, all agree that the Buchmesse is number one among the 30-odd fairs held in Frankfurt annually. It is also the most glamorous. It brings in celebrities. Publishers spend more lavishly than auto salesmen or textile engineers, even though they earn less. The media gives publishers more coverage.
Karsten Diettrich, legendary head of French publisher France Loisirs, insists that the social aspect of our business is as important as the financial. “Even in this era when emails fall on you like heavy rain it’s important to shake hands with new people and discover new ideas,” he tells me. “I made business with you, an Indian publisher, and fine-tuned a manuscript from Hong Kong.”
As the recession set in, like other industries publishing saw a decline in sales. Some charming publishers went under. In the last two years at Frankfurt there have been more gossip and rumour than discussions of astonishing print runs. Fewer art books were presented, bought or sold. Quantities dwindled and agreements were delayed. The gloom showed in the slimmer catalogues, but the optimism prevails.
The author is publisher, Roli Books