Frankfurt Book Fair 2008 -- Printers, Publishers and Service Providers at FBF

• Email
• Print
• Decrease
• Increase
• 

The Frankfurt Book Fair in its 60th year started with a blow to the two largest English-language book industries. At a Special Summit in Frankfurt, the Publishers Associations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand decided to form a Coalition in order to counter the dominance of the UK and US publishing industries in their markets. The Summit, which was organised by the Association for the Export of Canadian Books (AECB), the Australian Publishers Association (APA) and the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand (BPANZ), was attended by some 120 publishers and the ambassadors of the three countries in Germany. There were detailed presentations on their respective book markets and globalisation trends affecting these.  It was concluded that in Canada, for instance, the supply chain is increasingly being integrated into the US supply chain, while in Australia bookshop return rates have been dropping significantly over the past few years as a result of publishers moving to firm-sale on backlist titles. “We are all struggling to free ourselves from the proprietorial attitudes of the US and UK publishers that continue to dominate the publishing world,” noted Juliet Rogers, former APA President. “The US views Canadian rights as an automatic extension of their territory, even though they frequently have no intention of responsibly exercising those rights. The UK fails to grasp that the Empire is dead and that Commonwealth markets are no longer theirs by right.”

• 
• Match-Making event organised by the German Book Office, New Delhi for Indian printers at FBF to meet international publishers and print buyers

The three Publishers Associations discussed possibilities of working together in order to better compete with US and UK publishers, for instance by forming consortia to bid for North American or British and Commonwealth rights, and by joining forces in digital publishing prospects. “There are more opportunities for us to get together than we can imagine,” said AECB Chair Philip Cercone. It is expected that a follow-up meeting will be held at the upcoming London Book Fair to build on the momentum created by the Frankfurt Special Summit.

India
The Indian book industry, meanwhile, received its share of attention at the Frankfurt Book Fair, thanks to a major effort by the recently established German Book Office in New Delhi. GBO New Delhi is a joint venture of the Frankfurt Book Fair and Germany’s Foreign Ministry, and the sixth FBF overseas office next to the GBO New York and Book Info Centres in Beijing, Bucharest, Moscow and Warsaw.

Match-Making for printers
At a Match-Making event in Frankfurt, GBO New Delhi with support from Welbound Worldwide and Indian Printer and Publisher, brought together international print buyers and Indian service providers. The Indian companies included Aegean Offset Printers, Ajanta Press, Anderson Technology, Gopsons Press, JAK Printers, Manipal Press and Repro India. Two or three print buyers complained about the lack of relevant printing and binding samples, but many of them did have follow-up meetings with potential partners from India.

The Indian printers expressed their satisfaction with the results of the matchmaking facility, and agreed that the event was ‘a good beginning.’ Aegean Offset’s CEO Aajaya Talwar told us that he had benefitted from the event. He said that his company has been learning year-by-year since he has been attending the Book Fair. “This time, the response has been terrific, and we have consciously declined some orders because we felt we had to stay within our possibilities and capacities, and not take on works we cannot digest,” he said.

GBO Delhi also pointed international publishers and other print buyers to the Indian publishing service providers with booths across the Frankfurt Book Fair, which included several XML content tagging companies and repro houses.

‘A Look at India’ was organised in a collaboration between the GBO and Capexil, leading groups of international book professionals around the cluster of booths occupied by the Indian publishers and printers. Although the India cluster organised by Capexil hardly spanned 30 booths instead of the 40 that had been planned, the missing numbers were made up by collective representations managed by the National Book Trust and the CII Publishing Cell recently established by the Confederation of Indian Industry. Together, and not counting the mutual overlaps, these represented around 20 additional publishers. Indian printers, publishers and service providers held more than a dozen booths in two other halls of the book fair, while others shared booths with their international counterparts, bringing the total number of Indian companies represented in Frankfurt to about 75.

On the second day of the fair, there was a presentation of the Indian publishing industry, organised by the GBO and the CII Publishing Cell. Publisher Urvashi Butalia, Chairperson of the CII Publishing Cell, pointed at some of the major issues currently at stake in India’s book market, and provoked a lively discussion among booksellers and publishers from Australia, India, the UK and the US. There were also debates and author readings organised by the GBO in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut, Penguin India, Zubaan and Draupadi Publishers. Authors included Kiran Nagarkar, Jaishree Misra and Baby Halder. A party at Atlantic Books celebrated their second Man Booker Prize winner, The White Tiger by debut novelist Aravind Adica. He is the fourth Indian author to win the prize, joining Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and (also with Atlantic) Kiran Desai, who won the prize in 1981, 1997 and 2006 respectively.

Turkey
The Frankfurt Book Fair concluded with a 5.6 per cent rise in visitor numbers — more than 2,99,000 as compared to 2,83,000 in 2007. Trade visitors made up for less than one fifth of this increase (1,86,240 as compared to last year’s 1,82,700). The number of exhibitors with booths decreased slightly, from 7,500 in 2007 to 7,373 this year, but participation in the Literary Agents and Scouts Centre increased by more than 8 per cent to 510 trading tables. Overall, the high visitor outcome — the highest since 2001 — has largely been due to the general public. Actually, Saturday, the fair’s fourth day, saw the most visitors in one day (78,000) in the entire history of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Guest of Honour programme brought 250 authors and 100 publishers from Turkey to the fair, and, with a strong Turkish immigrant community in Germany, many Turkish families used the sunny weekend to attend some of the more than 400 events and connect with their favourite writers. One of the highlights was a speech by Nobel Laureate, Orhan Pamuk about writing in his country. Looking back at this year’s programme, he reasoned: “I can imagine that young writers who are coming to the fair for the first time will be just as overwhelmed by the sheer size of it all as I was 18 years ago. But once they have found their own voice, they will not ask themselves despondently ‘Who is going to be interested in a Turkish writer?’ Not anymore, I don’t believe it.”

With a population of 70 million and a literacy rate of 97 per cent, Turkey has a strong book market. Some 1,800 publishers produced more than 33,000 titles last year. There are 6,000 bookstores and a network of around 50 official distributors. Out of the total annual book market estimated at US$ 810 million, imports represent US$ 26 million, the largest part of which are academic text books. Many of the foreign-language study books are produced locally, and there is a large public interest in Turkish translations of international publications both fiction and non-fiction.

Apart from the Guest of Honour Turkey, there was increased business interest to be observed at the booths of Russia and the other CIS countries, Eastern Europe and some of the Asian countries. China of course had a huge program in preparation of its appearance as Guest of Honour at next year’s fair. Yet, the fair’s largest contingents after the German book industry (3,337 booths), so far, remained the UK with 834 and the US with 662 booths.

The “Digital Book Fair”
The other major issue at the fair was digitisation. As Book Fair Director Juergen Boos put it, “Digitisation draws people to Frankfurt.” He added: “One of the main reasons for the increase in trade visitors is the need for guidance with regard to the new business models and fields of business which digitisation creates.” For more than 360 exhibitors at the fair, eBooks were already an integral part of their publishing lists. Amazon Kindle and Sony PRS505 Readers could be seen all over the fair, and the number of available eTitles is rapidly reaching the 3,00,000 mark. In a survey conducted for the Frankfurt Book Fair, online bookselling was seen as the most important development in the industry over the past 60 years. Amazon and Google were seen as the main drivers of the digitisation process. Digital content was predicted to overtake printed books in sales by 2018, and China’s digital influence in international publishing was expected to increase threefold in the next five years. So far, however, 66 per cent of industry professionals surveyed still expect traditional books to dominate the market in five years time.

The next Frankfurt Book Fair will take place October 14-18, 2009. China will be the Guest of Honour.

• Email
• Print
• Decrease
• Increase
•