Forsaken
Frankfurt?
Amid
Post-Book-Fair Grumbling, London Gains on the Buchmesse
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (NOVEMBER 2002)
“Deplorable,
but not lethal” was the official word on southbound
exhibitor numbers at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair
— they tumbled 4%, a figure direly reported to the trade
as “the biggest decline in the fair’s 54-year history”
— and it made for a condign summation of the world-weary
Buchmesse as a whole. Stung from savage hotel price
hikes, bummed out by a guttering German book trade,
and exhausted by bivouacs in a rights center so far-flung
it may as well have been in Köln, attendees winging
home from this year’s fair packed along plenty of their
usual post-fair grumbling, and then some.
“Of
course the fair isn’t as important as before, simply
because you’ve heard about the interesting stuff beforehand
via email or fax,” says Merete Borre of Danish
publisher Lindhardt og Ringhof, in a typical
observation. “The London Book Fair is getting
more and more important for us, as well as the fair
in Gothenburg. We’ll need to go to all three
places.” Those closer to home were in the same boat.
“The general consensus is that Frankfurt is extremely
expensive — the hotels, the stands, the hoopla — and
the number of people attending kept small,” notes Tim
Bent, Senior Editor at St. Martin’s Press.
“From an editorial point of view, the London fair has
taken on nearly equal importance to Frankfurt.” Then,
too, Germany’s economic doldrums left many visitors
feeling especially burned. “Lots of agents and foreign
rights people were unpleasantly surprised that the Germans
have stopped paying big money, and some have stopped
buying altogether,” says German agent Michael Meller.
“Quite a number of people haven’t recovered their Frankfurt
expenses, and are beginning to realize that the scene
has changed — whether for good or just temporarily.”
Frankfurt, one publishing executive says, “doesn’t drop
to the bottom line.”
With the buzz ever amping at London, and a nagging feeling
that Americans may be sneaking toward the Buchmesse
sidelines, that perennial post-fair question — Is Frankfurt
becoming dispensable? — may pack a little more punch
this time around. Frankfurt brass, for their part, are
working hard to soften the blow. “We are certainly concerned
about the price increases that we have seen,” Frankfurt
Book Fair Director Volker Neumann tells PT,
“and we are in very tough discussions with the hotels
in Frankfurt about their pricing policies.” Fair planners
are also working round the clock to restructure the
layout of the German halls, relocate the agents’ center,
and do a better job of delineating different sectors
of publishing. But by no means, says Neumann, is Frankfurt
ready to concede the title of the world’s best book
convention. “London and BookExpo America are
still confined to the English-speaking world in their
relevance,” Neumann maintains, pointing to a rising
international crowd at Frankfurt — 110 countries came
this year — and the fact that Frankfurt has about twice
as many UK exhibitors as London. Plus, with 265,000
visitors (up over last year, but still down from 2000),
it’s still nearly ten times the size of BEA.
Foreign attendees may be skeptical about the number
of deals going down, but they’re still behind the fair.
“Frankfurt is now more a public relations book fair,”
says Ornella Robbiati, Editor-in-Chief of Italian
publisher Sonzogno. “We get 90% of the manuscripts
by email before the fair.” Nonetheless, she adds, Italians
are in no way prepared to bail out, and she says even
American drop-outs would do little to affect European
participation. (Robbiati’s bigger concern is the American
throngs in London. “I’m worried by the constant increase
in the number of Americans there — it’s impossible to
see them all. In London I must see English publishers
and agents, so I can only keep half a day for the US,
no matter how many Americans are there.”)
For some Americans, too, the fair still packs appeal.
“Frankfurt helps you get over the sound barrier,” says
Nan Talese, President, Publisher, and Editorial
Director of Nan A. Talese Books. She doggedly
attends Frankfurt and hasn’t been to London for the
last two shows, and has her own serendipitous tale:
she dreamed up a book concept with Paul Newman
and A.E. Hotchner writing about the creation
of the “Newman’s Own” line. She signed the book up just
before Frankfurt, and with no written description, sold
the project to Chinese publisher Rex Howe of
Locus. “This would not happen in London or at
BEA,” Talese says.
Even in the world of children’s publishing, Frankfurt
is holding its own against the Bologna Children’s
Book Fair, the major confab of the kids’ business.
Maureen Golden, a partner in children’s packager
Orange Avenue, notes that the four-year-old company
regularly exhibits at Frankfurt and finds a much stronger
response from prospective publishers than at Bologna.
However, Bologna boasted an 8% increase in foreign children’s
publisher visitors last year, placing both fairs in
an apparent win-win relationship. “My advice would be
to go to Bologna for children’s, go to Frankfurt for
children’s, and go to London for children’s,” adds Susan
Katz, President and Publisher of the Children’s
Division at HarperCollins. “I think you learn
things from the adult market, and you see things that
might work in the children’s market. I can’t tell you
how many times while I was at Frankfurt I said to myself:
If I learn nothing else, this one thing would be worth
it.”
‘Massive’
Growth at London
While
Frankfurt may still be the biggest, it’s not necessarily
the best, say London partisans. And the numbers are
impressive. Exhibitor space at the last London Book
Fair was up 6%. Bookseller attendance rose 9.6%. Visitors
were up 1.4%. And press attendance shot up a whopping
36%. “For a number of years now we’ve been getting more
and more support, especially from America but also from
countries around the world,” says Alistair Burtenshaw,
Exhibition Director for the London Book Fair. “European
attendance has been increasing rapidly. International
collectives of overseas publishers have also grown massively.”
The collective stand from France now counts as the show’s
largest exhibiting company, he says. Moreover, next
year’s gig will see “very large new presences” from
Belgium and Greece, while China has also been growing
its presence year-over-year. Then there’s the fair’s
International Rights Centre, which drew 114 North American
companies last year, up 28%. And as for LBF 2003, coming
March 16? It’s already 93% sold.
“With
the continuing success of London, and with ever more
year-round rights business, people are realizing that
there doesn’t have to be a single show where you get
all your business done,” says packager and Publishers
Lunch founder Michael Cader. “The lesson
of London has been that if you work from a place where
there is already a natural concentration of publishing,
you’ve got a great nucleus to build on.” To that end
Cader, along with industry consultant Mike Shatzkin,
has been working on the rights show tentatively
titled “Publishing in New York” (formerly “Frankfurt
in New York”), which would bring agents, editors, packagers,
and others together in New York in May, at a time when
many of them swing through the city on their usual rounds.
Organizers are currently in discussions with BEA parent
company Reed Exhibitions, among other parties,
about sponsoring the show, though they underscore that
reports elsewhere of firm plans are premature. Cader
says that while mega-events on the scale of Frankfurt
will always have their value, smaller, more concentrated
forums make economic sense. “We may find that we don’t
have to have supershows for certain communities to get
good business done,” he adds. “Should we be successful
in staging the New York show, I wouldn’t be surprised
to see more efforts popping up elsewhere as well.”
Indeed, the rise in international participation has
helped boost other fairs too. Christian Booksellers
Association President Bill Anderson tells
PT that the group’s international convention
in Anaheim last July was a pleasant surprise. “Given
that some trade shows have been off as much as 50%,
we were extremely pleased with 13,129. We had people
from 50 countries and our highest international attendance
ever, with 1,039 people from outside the US.” The group’s
CBA Expo is on tap for January 29-31 in Indianapolis,
and interest is so strong that 30 exhibitors have been
placed on a waiting list. Plus, a glance at conventions
in the technology sector makes Frankfurt look like hog
heaven. “Book conventions have held up very well,” says
Courtney Muller, Executive Director at New
York Is Book Country and veteran of industry conferences
at Penton Media (producers of Internet World)
and Reed Exhibitions. “COMDEX is one quarter the size
it was two years ago. Internet World is one tenth the
size it was two years ago. Book shows are staying steady,
which in this climate for the trade show and event industry
is great news.”
Some international observers were wont to read a political
subtext into the Americans’ cold shoulder. “Surely US
chief executives are just following Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
and Ashcroft’s lead in ignoring what the rest of the
world is thinking,” charges UK agent Toby Eady.
“America is out of step and even more so by missing
a year.” Everyone knows, Eady says, that English-language
business gets sent straight to New York. But with a
client list of 60% foreign writers, Eady calls Frankfurt
“the one time I feel I do something interesting. We
sold Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby in 30 languages,
Xinran in 21 so far, and Jung Chang in
31. Frankfurt is a circle of publishers who buy one
another’s taste, as the London Book Fair is becoming,”
Eady adds. “And so twice a year we sell.”
©2002
Publishing Trends
