The Frankfurt Book Fair is covered daily -- and lavishly -- by most national media, including TV, radio and newspapers. The detail would make any BookExpo America publicist green with envy. But for several reasons this show is outdoing its predecessors as a publicity grabber.
Already this year, the show is getting even more coverage -- mainly attributable to Gunter Grass's Nobel Prize for Literature, announced in September, a full month earlier than usual. (Some wonder if the early announcement was intended to help create this kind of media blitz as a benefit to the Nobel, the book fair, German literature and Grass's leftist politics.)
Perhaps the most striking extra coverage comes in this week Spiegel, a national newsmagazine like Newsweek or Time, which is offering more than 50 pages about the book fair -- "Book Fair Extra" -- and has a cover photo of six promising younger German authors with the headline "the Grandchildren of Grass & Co." The group is depicted playing tin drums like those in the film version of the laureate's most famous work -- one drum was an original from the film. But beyond articles about these promising writers, who the magazine says show the kind of promise Grass did in his early days, Spiegel has pages of information about other writers (parts are reminiscent of a PW announcements issue), a schematic of the fairgrounds (useful to non trade visitors who are allowed in beginning Saturday) and an interview in classic Spiegel style with Peace Prize winner Fritz Stern.
