The Frankfurt Book Fair - should you go?

Next week it's the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two., the biggest annual book fair and a huge meeting of publishers from all over the world. Publishers are putting together their projects and packing their bags in preparation for five days of intensive back-to-back meetings.

In a new article in Bookbrunch, Lance Fitzgerald, VP and Director of subsidiary rights at Crown Publishing Group in New York, looks at the fair in a piece entitled Frankfurt Rights Meeting - A deeper look into our business, prepared for the one-day meeting of rights people which precedes the fair, which this year is entitled 'Change is the new constant: A close-up on East Asia, audio, and creating a buzz'

Fitzgerald says that the two biggest changes in the subsidiary rights business are the speed with which things happen and the involvement of social media, although he is rather sceptical about whether the latter provides a useful way to market to editors and other rights purchasers.

An article in our Inside Publishing series on The Frankfurt Book Fair provides a perspective on the Fair from the point of view of writers. Is this something authors should be trying to attend, or is it really a meeting of publishers, a business to business convention with the German public coming in over the weekend? As the veteran of many book fairs I would urge authors to let the publishers get on with it. Your presence is not welcome unless you have been specifically invited by your publisher and it is not a good arena for self-publishers. It can also be a bit dismaying to realise the extent to which the publishing world is focused not so much on writers as on the business of publishing.