At This Year's Frankfurt Book Fair, Uncertainty Was Met with Optimism

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., which ran October 14-18, was reimagined for 2020 as an entirely virtual event. The fair usually hosts more than 300,000 visitors, but this year, because of the spread of Covid-19 across Europe, all in-person events were canceled. Instead, the organizers channeled several million euros in government support into producing a broad slate of online activities. The schedule listed 3,627 events during the fair, including some 70 hours of business-to-business trade events and nearly 200 more hours of programming targeting the reading public. And dozens of writers gave talks at this year's Bookfest, the concurrent literary festival.