Frankfurt Book Fair

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.

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.

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")

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.

“Enter Korea” (motto): 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 the guest country appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Korean embassy had declared 2005 as Korea Year in Germany. Around 60 Korean authors had had a “LiteraTour” of Germany, last stop scheduled for the Book Fair - with so many cultural events including traditional printing, dance ... and (foto-) exhibitions. (Some of these guest-country-events use to start long before and continue in the more local museums long after the fair. A symposion 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".

2006

4-8 October (opening hours see above).

India: Guest 2006

First country coming for a second time (first was 1986, last case where Frankfurt Bookfair organised the annual Guest appearance; since then the guest is also paying it). Caused by a growing Indish Book-Industrie and also increasing numbers of German book-licences to India. Besides, lots of online work flow to India since a law that limited investments was taken away: mostly organisation of science publishing STM, which is growing Online and most in English anyway. (India: Worldwide third range of markets for publications in English; 12.000 publishers; 90.000 new publications annually in over 18 languages, sinking analphabetism). Yoga, par example as a part of health-policy, is certainly part of the guest appearance, probably calming down the football fever (in Germany over 500 books on football new alone this spring). Indien (and China) are seen as the growing markets (so does the Lagardère-house, third in the range of biggest publishers. Also Random House is expanding in India. (see German Page and World book fair New Delhi)

Book Fair website

The Frankfurt Book Fair maintains a website with title and rights databases, international market overwiev, analyses, and other services. See: http://www.book-fair.com

Frankfurt Book Fair official website

External Links

Korea as guest of honour by signandsight

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