The International Rights Show Dilemma
Herbert R. Lottman -- 6/19/00
A slow Rights Center, but plenty of focus on the floor
BEA's international sideshow has always been a three-headed affair: the foreign publishers' booths; the Rights Center for packagers, agents and U.S.-based scouts for overseas publishers; and a largely invisible fair, involving visitors without tables or booths, working out of their briefcases and hotel rooms--the latter including some of the show's biggest spenders on rights.
There are ways to run them down, all the same. Thus Little, Brown's sub rights director Linda Biagi showed an impressive list of appointments, running every half hour during throughout the show. "And that's nothing. We saw 75 people in New York just before Chicago. I haven't had a meal with an American for two weeks--except my husband." Interestingly, she was seeing many of the same people she had talked to at the London Book Fair earlier in the spring.
 | | Rights Center featured lots of empty tables |
The Rights Center opened early this year--two full days before the exhibition floor. "It was a slow start, but we were ready," the Center's co-manager Torri Zaccagnino explained. "We recognize that many foreigners traveled a long way to get here and wanted to have as much time as possible to work." The Center had sold some 200 tables, although many remained unoccupied through much of the show. PW met one assiduous user of the Center, however: Rowohlt's Peter Wilfert, one of the Holtzbrinck group's senior publishers; with 700 annual titles, 40% of them translations, he is one of his country's most welcome visitors at any book fair. He judged this fair slow, certainly for the lack of promising product (which for him meant good commercial fiction and nonfiction). Wilfert's New York scout, Carol Frederick at Sanford Greenburger, had vetted advance lists of American publishers and agents, and Wilfert then compiled his own short list of things to track down. At show's end he was bidding on 10 books and expected to get five of them. He attributed the falling off of German participation this year to problems back home, and not to BEA. But he didn't see a return of the Germans in a big way before BEA travels to New York two years down the pike.
| Elsewhere in the Center, or on the floor, one did meet some of Wilfert's chief competitors among his countrymen, such as Bertelsmann's Klaus Eck, Viktor Niemann of Piper Verlag, Lothar Menne of Ullstein. {and agents who were often the connection with the books they wanted, such as Ursula Bender and Michael Mellor of Munich). From France, Karsten Diettrich of Bertelsmann's France Loisirs book club and his buying partner Renaud Bombard of Havas's Presses de la Cité, Laffont's Leonello Brandolini, Olivier Nora of Grasset, Anne Freyer of Seuil. Among the Italians: Mondadori chief Gianni Ferrari, the Rizzoli group's publishers Rosaria Carpinelli and Mario Andreose, Carla Tanzi of Sperling & Kupfer. From the Netherlands: Bert de Groot of his now independent Veen group, Chantal d'Aulnis of Meulenhoff, Hanca Leppink of Luitingh, and then Brazil's leading publishers of foreign commercial fiction, Sergio Machado of Record, Paulo Rocco of Rocco. |
Int'l Highlights
Foreign visitors generally found
a lack of promising product Focus among international
exhibitors was stronger than usual For some international visitors,
more happened in New York
before the show than during it. Some are asking: Couldn't BEA
come to New York next year,
instead of back to Chicago?
|
Foreign Exhibitors
Back on the floor the international exhibits seemed more focused this year. One of the fair's touted features was to be a "Spanish Pavilion," which was never labeled as such, although Spanish-language publishers from mainland Spain and Spanish America were well represented. Here PW talked to Jesus Anaya of Planeta Mexico, one of that country's leaders, sharing the market with two all-Mexican houses and the affiliates of two other mainland Spanish groups, Santillana and Grijalbo. Certainly Planeta was on a high, profiting from what Anaya described as a better business climate.
 | | Chantal D'Aulnis of Holland's Meulenhoff |
On the subject of the increasingly unified nature of global Spanish-language publishing, Jordi Nadal--now working as a deputy to Random House chief Peter Olson--was ready to describe his heretofore unannounced return to Barcelona, where he will be corporate development manager for Bertelsmann's Plaza y Janes for both Spain and Latin America, and managing director of all of Plaza's Spanish-American operations His writ gives Nadal a new kind of transatlantic reach; in addition, he and Plaza's Spanish export manager were discussing a new marketing plan with Random House, which will soon be launching its own impressive Spanish-language program. "Spanish publishers know that their future has to be in Latin America. There is no way to grow in Spain itself unless you take market share away from a competitor," Nadal said.
A number of American houses acknowledged the presence of their overseas partners when sending out invites to cocktail parties. Pocket Books' Judith Curr made it a point to invite half a dozen of her overseas counterparts to a staff dinner at a Chicago steak house. By far the most impressive foreign event outside the fairgrounds was the traditional Sunday lunch hosted by Jeannette and Dick Seaver of Arcade Publishing for their overseas colleagues, most of them British and Continental.
 | At Rights Center.com, Jorge
Naveiro (l.) of Argentina's
Atlantida with Polish agent
Zbigniew Kanski. |
Raising the International Profile
There was some talk among the visitors about the future of BEA's international side. An increasing number of key players felt that two annual rights fairs were sufficient, one of them (of course) being Frankfurt. But there were almost as many who felt that there can never be too many opportunities to meet. | scout Maria Campbell with Anne
Freyer of France's Le Seuil (r.) |
"Even in the electronic age this business is about people," insisted Laffont's Leonello Brandolini, "and I hope it stays that way." He didn't mind what many of his colleagues saw as the subdued activity of the exhibition floor--"It's good for us; we can actually get work done." In these days of e-business, getting to know one's correspondents is more essential than ever, he felt.
One of those who found the fair quieter than usual was Brazil's Paulo Rocco. "Of course with all these fairs it is hard to find something you haven't heard about. But even taking that into account, it's quiet." For veteran New York scout Todd Siegal of Franklin & Siegal, the pile-up of fairs had become too much. His clients--an elite group of foreign publishers--were coming to BEA in ever smaller numbers (10 of the total of 19 had attended last year, only seven this year). Siegal pointed out that more happened for his principals in New York in the fortnight before the fair than at BEA; indeed, some publishers seemed to be holding back manuscripts ready at show time because they sensed that "nothing would happen here." Renaud Bombard, one of Europe's biggest buyers of American books for the Havas commercial list, summed up what he and fellow Europeans were thinking;: henceforth they'd try to make do with Frankfurt in fall, London in spring, and one or two annual visits to the Big Apple.
But if London seemed to be getting the best of it at present, there were predictions that the New York edition of BEA might prove to be a turnaround--but that was two years off, and there would still be the problem of what to do with next year in Chicago. From that kind of speculation, more than one of the international side's major players thought that the organizers of BEA would do well to change next year's venue to New York, if they could manage it. "They've got to do
 | Frank Vernamer (l.) and
Jordi Nadal of Plaza y Janes |
something," one scout pleaded. She had given a party for her overseas clients in New York just before BEA, and most of them showed up. But only one of them followed her to the Second City.
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