Bologna 1998
Herbert R. Lottman -- 3/2/98
Lifting the curtain on Italy's springtime book fair for children
Publishing for children has always involved respect for tradition, meaning that story books that still look much like the ones Grandma used to read are still staple fare. Yet who more than children are receptive to the sparks and surprises of new media? So at this year's Bologna Children's Book Fair, traditional book publishers will share the aisles with proponents of Star Wars technology. (The dates are early, April 2-5, but Easter week is also early, and follows on its heels.)
After years of hesitation -- for not all the world's publishers moved into (and sometimes right out of) multimedia as speedily as the Anglo-American contingent did -- Bologna's organizers continue to keep a window open for electronics. "We know that most publishers still put books first," explains Bologna's Francesca Ferrari, "but we think that we should keep up with developments in every field related to books or derived from them."
So while most pavilions will look more or less as they always did, a Software Arcade connecting two of the halls has been earmarked for demo stands of multimedia publishers. Americans will also be represented in a collective "U.S. Media Show" organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, while Britain's Publishers Association plans a multimedia corner at its own booth.
The Bologna fair now has its own website, offering general information, facilitating registration and hotel reservations, and providing a listing of pre-registered professional visitors as well as links to exhibitor Web sites. Note that in addition to a printed catalogue, Bologna offers exhibitors an electronic version, sent free to exhibitors and pre-registered visitors. Bologna also sponsors a slate of new media prizes, in addition to the regular awards for print publications, via a selection committee set up in association with Children's Software Review. Prizewinners will be announced at the opening day's cocktail party at 6:30 p.m. in the Palazzo dei Congressi.
Strictly for Professionals
In the past, this user-friendly fair attracted a crowd that unfortunately included many people who had no business there. Bologna management (a public trade fair corporation responsible for a year-round program of professional events) now makes a serious effort to screen visitors. Pre-registered participants will receive passes or (with credentials) can purchase admission tickets valid for the four-day run of the show. The price-about $14-is thought to be high enough to discourage members of the public. But if you have brought the kids along, free day-care is available.
Once inside, professionals will have access to 10 exhibition buildings, six of them in an Italian compound, facing pavilions for U.S., U.K. and other English-language publishers, then a large double hall for all other countries. A Literary Agents Center will provide meeting space and a message center for leading specialists in children's book rights.
One Bologna feature that many visiting publishers look forward to is the Illustrators Exhibition, which displays the work of some 150 artists, vetted by an international jury. This year 81 illustrators in fiction were chosen from 1704 applicants, and 53 of the 278 illustrators of nonfiction. An illustrated exhibition catalogue contains brief bios and bibliographies, as well as contact information.
Oh, yes, Bologna thinks it has found a way to deal with the chief problem of every fair: how to leave. Just outside the main gate, a free shuttle bus will get you to the center of town after a day's work.
Making Contact: U.S. Visitors Hope to Solidify Past Relationships and Forge New Ones
David Walsh
Senior V-P, international
Scholastic
Things are quite healthy heading into Bologna. We're primarily there to sell and we're anticipating a full schedule at the fair. I can tell from the faxes that are coming in that we will have nonstop sessions.
Bologna has proven a good follow-up to Frankfurt for us. Our rights selling is an ongoing process: we see people at Frankfurt and then we hope to get further along and lock in deals at Bologna. We're very bullish this year. We have lots of interest in our Animorphs series, and there is still some overseas interest in Goosebumps. Television deals in a variety of territories have also kept our Magic School Bus series alive.
I call Bologna the civilized fair. We [the Scholastic divisions]used to be separated from each other but now we're all together in the same pavilion. We had a very good year at Bologna last year. Because Goosebumps was such an unusual phenomenon over the past several years, it drew many of the overseas publishing companies to us. They've now begun to look at what else Scholastic has to offer.
Jane Leventhal
V-P, Publisher
The Jim Henson Company
Since we have several publishing partners who retain world or English-language rights in our properties, we really have two roles to play at Bologna: we steer people to our partners and we also sell rights through other international agents or on our own.
It's true what people say -- "you never know till you go." We've had a lot of success at Bologna, making new partners both in the U.S. and in Europe. That means a lot because we're actually very tiny -- you can't compare us with Warner Brothers or Disney. This year we already have enormous interest overseas in a new television property, Bear in the Big Blue House.
Bologna is an opportunity for us to show publishers everything that we do. We look for the right partner to fit with what we're doing. Each territory is so different from another; what works in Spain won't work in Mexico, for example. It's an eye-opener. We are also always looking for new ideas and artists.
On the business side, publishing is hurting everywhere, so you can't go after the big advances unless you have a sure thing. It's better to make a smart, win-win deal so that everyone will want to work together again. Long-term relationships are more important to us.
This year I hope there will be a good turnout at the fair. I hope that people can still attend despite company cutbacks. Even though we all have e-mail, the fair is a great place to catch up. You need that person-to-person contact.
Jim Becker
Partner
becker&mayer!
As book producers, our main objective at Bologna is to take projects we've sold to U.S. publishers, for which we've retained translation rights, and find foreign publishers for those titles so we can build a print run. So far we've been most successful selling rights to publishers in England and Australia, though companies in Taiwan, Korea and Germany have also been very receptive to our projects.
Since in our juvenile line we specialize in book-plus products, pricing seems to be the biggest issue with foreign publishers. We have some book-and-game combinations that work very well in an international market. But the overseas market is even more price resistant than the U.S. market -- if that is at all possible! Getting items to a low enough price point often entails redesigning the packaging and paring it down from the U.S. models. This is difficult because even among the foreign markets there are requests for different packaging and it's hard to build sufficient numbers for a print run. Many book-plus packages require significant start-up costs and small printings just don't make sense. In past years we've had projects that publishers in other countries wanted, but we weren't able to make it work at a price they were willing to pay. This is our biggest hurdle with the foreign market.
We view this fair as a great chance for American publishers to see our whole line of books, which they normally don't have a chance to do. A main objective of ours this year is to get projects going with some countries we're not presently working with. If we can get a few more every year, it certainly makes going there worthwhile.
George Nicholson
Senior Agent
Sterling Lord Literistic
It seems to me that the selling of rights at the fair has become more institutionalized. More is being done by rights people than by editors. And there has been a changing of the guard, with a whole new group of people attending the fair. It is very expensive to send people, so it seems as though mainly rights people are attending. I went last year and I won't be going this year. I'll probably go every other year.
We sell mainly middle-grade fiction and some YA -- we do very few picture books -- and mostly to Japan and European countries. There is a genuine interest in middle-grade fiction internationally. The great tragedy is that American publishers are buying less fiction in. There used to be a feeling that American publishers had a responsibility to represent great fiction here, but the books weren't big sellers.
Michael Harkavy
V-P, Worldwide Publishing
Warner Brothers
As we head into Bologna I can say that we're selling many more rights to our properties. In the past year we've put in place a full-time sales team in Europe and it has affected our sales dramatically. We also have a person dedicated to Latin America and we're very pleased with growth in those territories as well. And this year we will be meeting with new partners in the Middle East, Greece and Turkey. We're beginning to experience nice growth outside the U.S.
We are an umbrella business, encompassing music, publishing and interactive products. Our overall strategy is for the publishing program to follow other media into new territories. Television is definitely our muscle, and we tend not to do deals where there is not television programming to drive such properties as Looney Toons and Hanna-Barbera characters from the Cartoon Network.
We look for partners who can have strong distribution in many different areas, such as Europe's Egmont Group. We are finalizing a large deal with them involving a family of Looney Toons magazines that is definitely a cornerstone deal for us.
Nancy Gallt
V-P, Director of Subsidiary Rights,
Children's Books; William Morrow
This will be my 18th Bologna, believe it or not. Most of our recent foreign sales have been for Avon original series like Eerie, Indiana, and at the fair I hope to find out about new publishers who want series. We inherited Avon rights a few years ago and this kind of media tie-in [the series is based on a TV program] is new to me, personally. We've had more interest from international agents because of the Avon titles as well. If you don't have the kind of volume that a series can generate, it often d sn't make sense to work with agents.
About 80% of our list is picture books, and although the international market for picture books hasn't been so great, we will probably sell duplicate film for some of our titles into the Asian market, including China and Korea. But there is obviously some concern this year about the Asian economy. We've already heard from some publishers who would like to defer payment until publication rather than paying upon signature, which is how it is usually done. The prices are quoted in U.S. dollars and the cost may be prohibitive for Asian currencies. The worst Bolognas are when the dollar is strong, when no one can afford to buy anything.
We haven't done much with co-productions lately, as they have not been that profitable for us. Other companies, especially the British, still do a lot of them. HarperCollins in England, for example, has a team of five people just putting together co-productions. For now we will be selling only duplicate film. Some publishers have said that it would be cheaper to scan our books and pay an offset fee rather than buy the film, but until they can show that scanning is of the same quality, we prefer that they buy the film.
Diane Geracie
Director of Publishing
Lyrick Publishing
This will be our fourth year attending Bologna. At this point our priority is selling foreign rights to the properties that we hold -- Barney and Wishbone. Our main objective at this fair is to update our existing relationships with publishers in various countries and to search out new partnerships.
At one time our thinking was to wait until Barney appeared on TV in a specific country before we go into that market with books. But now we've changed that thinking and we look for publishing partners in countries where Barney hasn't yet arrived on TV. And with PolyGram's upcoming Barney film, there will be an even greater awareness of Barney throughout the world.
This will be the first Bologna fair where we have a full Wishbone publishing program to display. This TV show now airs in a number of countries and we're hoping to find a lot of interest in the books. And we always have our eyes open to acquire other things -- most likely along the lines of the licensed properties we already have.
Robin Corey
V-P, Associate Publisher and Editorial Director; Little Simon, Simon Spotlight and Rabbit Ears
Our purpose at Bologna is to buy rather than sell. I'm hoping that this year's fair is more exciting than last, which by universal agreement was a flat fair. There was nothing really fresh or exciting in the novelty-book realm that was a must-have. For the first time ever I bought absolutely nothing, though I did acquire a few things post-Bologna that I'd seen there. But 1997's slow fair came off the heels of a great fair the year before, where we snagged one of the hottest books there -- Penny Dann's The Secret Fairy Handbook. We've done very, very well with that.
Most publishers I deal with either visit me in New York or send catalogues in advance of the fair, and this year I haven't seen anything that made me write a note in my Bologna file saying "Cough up the cash for this one," but it's still early.
We have intentionally cut back the number of titles we're publishing so that we don't have great overlap or competition within our list. We're looking to publish more up-market titles, along the lines of our successful The Twelve Days of Christmas. In terms of our acquisitions at Bologna, we buy almost exclusively from U.K. publishers, since the look of the artwork from many countries just d sn't translate into the novelty arena that we specialize in.
Bologna is a very important fair for us, since so many publishers show new projects there for the first time. The number of titles we are likely to acquire there varies depending on the quality of what we see; if we find 15 wonderful projects we will buy them all. We have been developing a lot of our books in-house, but we are still very interested in what foreign publishers have created. Their projects enhance what we do.
Back To Children's Features
---> |
