This year the Frankfurt Book Fair, set for Wednesday–Sunday, October 18–22, will celebrate its 75th anniversary. Though this year’s attendance will lag behind that of the years just prior to the pandemic, the fair has come through the Covid era intact. And with a host of new challenges emerging, it remains a must-attend event on the global publishing calendar.
“The 75th anniversary is a celebration of 75 years of promoting writers and stories, bringing publishers and service providers from around the world together to share ideas, information, to collaborate, and to provide a platform for larger sociopolitical conversations,” says Jurgen Boos, director of the fair. “I am happy the book fair has been such a key event in international publishing history, and will continue to be in the future.”
As always, the heart of the Frankfurt Book Fair is the Literary Agents and Scouts Center, better known as the LitAg, and this year will see 326 agencies representing 31 countries occupying a record-breaking 584 tables in Hall 6.2, surpassing the previous record of 528 tables set in 2018. The countries with the most significant representation at this year’s LitAg include the U.S., U.K., Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates and Iceland will debut new national literary agencies, and agencies from China will return for the first time since 2019.
“The rights and licensing business continues to be the driver of our industry,” Boos says, calling this year’s record-breaking LitAg numbers “a testament to the significance of in-person meetings” in the rights trade, and a sign of “how greatly everyone missed these interactions” during the pandemic. “Trust, which is indispensable in the publishing industry, is most effectively built through face-to-face meetings. And this is what Frankfurt offers.”
This year’s Frankfurt Rights Meeting is being held virtually every Tuesday in September and will culminate in an in-person networking event on October 17. A new “book-to-screen day,” on the Friday of the show, will “put a spotlight on the film and streaming industries and how publishers can expand their rights and licensing sales,” Boos says. A new Publishers Rights Center in Hall 6.2 will offer tables to publishing professionals who are not part of the agencies represented in the LitAg. Both the LitAg and the Publishers Rights Center will open October 17, one day before the official start of the fair, and will remain open through October 22.
Changes
Fairgoers will notice several changes at the Messe, including a new Comic Centre (complete with its own trade program) in Hall 6. Hall 5 will also reopen this year with new exhibitors, and an International Stage between Halls 5 and 6 will host a variety of panels and discussions. Featured speakers include Nihar Malaviya, Penguin Random House’s recently appointed CEO; Kim Chongsatitwantana, CEO of Thailand’s NanmeeBooks; Pedro Sobral, CEO of Portugal’s Grupo Leya; Peter Warwick, CEO of Scholastic, and Jes Wolfe, CEO and chairwoman of Rebel Girls.
Also on the schedule, Hou Xiaonan, CEO of Chinese online publishing platform Yuewen, better known as China Literature, will be interviewed at this year’s Global 50 CEO Talk. And Slovenia is the fair’s 2023 Guest of Honor, with a program appearing under the motto “A Honeycomb of Words.”
The Frankfurt Book Fair’s stages will also host talks from a number of authors, including Deborah Feldman, Georgi Gospodinov, Maja Lunde, Salman Rushdie, and Lola Shoneyin. “I am happy to offer a stage in the international media spotlight for internationally renowned writers,” Boos says, adding that there will also be a special focus on “growth markets” like children’s, academic publishing, and audio, with conferences dedicated to them.
The fair will offer a series of panels and other events aimed at showing solidarity with Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Goethe Institute and the Ukrainian Book Institute will showcase the country’s culture with a large collective stand, which is being presented with the theme “Fragility of the Earth.”
Other topics set for discussion include sustainability, supply chain challenges, and surging inflation. But if one topic is likely to dominate the talk at Frankfurt, it’s the impact of artificial intelligence on the industry. Several panels at the fair will tackle AI, including “The State of AI in Publishing Today,” featuring Christoph Bläsi, professor of book studies at Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz; Nadim Sadek, founder and CEO of U.K.–based Shimmr AI; and Anna Soler-Pont, literary agent and founder of Spain’s Pontas Literary & Film Agency.
“ChatGPT and other new uses of AI have caused some unease, but, as with all of these changes throughout publishing’s history, we will find the ways to use this technology to benefit the industry,” Boos says. “At the same time, we need to put restrictions in place to protect those areas that are more vulnerable.” He adds that it’s crucial for publishers to have input, and to know “who is pulling the strings” when it comes to potential regulation. “This debate about AI is happening now, and changing every day.”
Boos says that at 75, the Frankfurt Book Fair is more important than ever. “Each year, the global publishing industry comes together at the same time in the same place to exchange ideas that are as vital as ever. This is what we see in Frankfurt. And I am happy about it. It almost seems to me that the pandemic years have given us something like a proof of concept.”
Read more from our Frankfurt Book Fair Preview:
Frankfurt Book Fair 2023: Rights Center Buzz
U.S. agents will talk up works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Kristin Hannah, Anthony Hopkins, Walter Isaacson, Alice McDermott, Salman Rushdie, Amy Tan, and more at Frankfurt this year. Here are the big titles on the block.
