Frankfurt Book Fair
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Frankfurt Book Fair (German: Frankfurter Buchmesse) is the world's largest trade fair for books, held annually in mid-October in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Representatives from book publishing and multimedia companies from all over the world come to the Frankfurt Book Fair in order to negotiate international publishing rights and licensing fees. The fair is organised by a subsidiary company of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and takes place every October. It is claimed to be the largest in the world, and for five days around 6,700 exhibitors and more than 270,000 visitors take part.
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[edit] The Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is a critical marketing event for the launching of books, but it is also an important event to facilitate the negotiation of the international sale of rights and licences. Visitors take the opportunity to obtain information about the publishing market, to network, and to do business. Publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, academics, illustrators, service providers, film producers, translators, printers, professional and trade associations, institutions, artists, authors, antiquarians, software and multimedia suppliers all take part in the events and business climate of Frankfurt Book Fair. In 2004, more than 12,000 journalists from 92 countries reported on the fair which brought together 6,691 individual exhibitors, 79 national exhibitions, and 180,000 trade visitors.
[edit] History
The Frankurt Book Fair has a tradition that spreads over more than 500 years. Soon after Johannes Gutenberg had invented printing in movable letters in the town of Mainz (only a short distance away from Frankfurt), the first book fair was held by local booksellers. Until the end of the 17th century, it was the most important book fair in Europe. Due to political and cultural reasons, it was replaced by the Leipzig Book Fair in the time of the enlightenment. After World War II, the first book fair was held again in 1949 at the St. Paul's Church.
[edit] The Frankfurt Book Fair in figures
- At the Frankfurt Book Fair 2004, 6,691 exhibitors and 79 national and collective displays were presented on an area of around 164,000 square metres.
- With approximately 1,800 exhibitors from English-speaking regions, the Frankfurt Book Fair is perhaps the largest in the Anglophone publishing industry.
- showed a total of 104,566 new publications out of total exhibits of 350,619 titles.
- 270,413 people came to the Frankfurt Book Fair over the five days of the 2004 event, 173,943 of them were trade visitors.
- 12,275 journalists from 92 countries were accredited for the Book Fair 2004.
- 1,300 literary translators are listed in the Frankfurt Book Fair's directory of translators.
- Altogether 2,855 events were presented in the context of the Frankfurt Book Fair.
(2005: almost unchanged statistic; Wiki German Page "Frankfurter Buchmesse")
[edit] Frankfurt Book Fair 2005
19-23 October, from Wednesday to Friday restricted exclusively to trade visitors; general public: Saturday and Sunday. Opening times are from 9.00 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. daily and to 5.30 p.m. on Sunday.
[edit] "Enter Korea" (slogan): Guest of Honour appearance 2005
In the Book Fair's exhibition "Books on Korea", publishing companies from all over the world showed translations of titles by Korean authors as well as current books about Korea. In conjunction with Korea's appearance as the guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Korean embassy had declared 2005 "Korea Year" in Germany. Around 60 Korean authors made a "LiteraTour" of Germany, with its last stop scheduled for the Book Fair. The tour featured a number of cultural events including traditional printing, dance, and (photo-) exhibitions. (Some of these guest-country-events use to start long before and continue in the more local museums long after the fair. A symposium on the division of Korea into north and south was a comparison with the German - very, very different situation of reunion. Maybe the conclusion rather was: to compare does even "hinder".
[edit] 2006
4-8 October (opening hours see above).
[edit] India: Guest 2006
First country to make a second appearance (first was 1986, the last time the Frankfurt Book Fair organised the annual Guest appearance; since then the guest has contributed to the cost). Caused by a growing Indian book industry and also increasing numbers of German book-licences to India. Furthermore, lots of much work has come to India since the abolition of a law that limited investments - mostly organisation of science publishing STM, which is growing Online. All science publishers let work there. (India: Worldwide third range of markets for publications in English; 12.000 publishers; 90.000 new publications annually in over 18 languages, sinking illiteracy. The bookfair started a new annual conference with other events on analphabetism).
The National Book Trust India had sponsored this second guest appearance and translations. Many autors had readings in different Indish languages (there was also an exposition on these). Yoga, for example as a part of health-policy, was a too small part of the guest appearance to probably calm down the football fever (in Germany over 500 books on football new alone in spring before).
Peter Weidhaas, for a very long time (former) director of the Frankfurt Bookfair, presented an anecdote on the first beginning of collaboration between the Indish and German bookindustrie in one of the forums on a jubilee of the Book Trust: Germany was still divided and the socialist stand on the Indish Bookfair had large geographical book, "the biggest of the world". The press was covering only that. So the west German government/diplomacy was astonished; their director remembered that he always takes the world's smallest book in his jacket pocket: a millimeter-bible from the Gutenberg-Museum. So putting that out was attractive enough for the press. "The bookfair is show-business", he said at Frankfurt on the occasion of the guests.
India (and China) are seen as the growing markets (Lagardère-, third in the range of biggest publishers. Random House is expanding in India. (see German Page and World book fair New Delhi)
[edit] Book Fair website
The Frankfurt Book Fair maintains a website with title and rights databases, international market overview, analyses, and other services.
