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. is back at full force for the first time in three years and while it was a little quieter than in years past, it was clear those attending the event were glad to back. Three years of Zoom calls has banished any cynicism one might have previously felt about the annual grind of traveling to Frankfurt for the fair. One publisher, asking for anonymity, said, "It's just not the same trying to buy and sell books over Zoom. It might be efficient, but it's not fun and it's not effective." Why the insistence on anonymity? Their boss would have preferred that they stay home, rather than rack up the expenses that can come with a trip to Frankfurt.
Links of the week October 24 2022 (43)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
24 October 2022
That said, with the U.S. dollar at parity with the euro, Frankfurt does feel-if not cheap-less expensive than in the past. A typically spartan European hotel room can be had for less than €300 euros a night and beer at the Frankfurter Hof-an always reliable barometer of economic exuberance tied to the fair-is pegged at €8 a glass, which feels cheaper than in previous years. There is also a new, perhaps unwelcome sense of thrift in the city, which has led to some minor frustrations. Exhibitor passes no longer cover public transportation and its cash only in many bars and restaurants, as institutions seek to avoid paying credit card fees.
The word of the week at the 2022 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., at least in the world of young adult books, is "romantasy," a portmanteau that speaks for itself.
"Fantasy with lots of romance in the YA category seems to be a thing," said Nicole Eisenbraun, agent and translation rights manager at Ginger Clark Literary. Claudia Galluzzi, a senior rights manager at Rights People who represents U.S. titles in Arabic, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish language markets, says that it's practically all anyone is asking for in any of her markets.
"Rights to the titles that we had in the newer catalogs have already been snatched immediately," Galluzzi said. Adding that the trend started with the pandemic but has grown over the past year in particular, she noted: "Obviously, you don't want to be in the present-you want something to take you to other worlds and other realities."
It's a sentiment that applies to this year's fair as well. In spite of an ever-growing list of global troubles-the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, protests in Iran (and the Iranian delegation's last-minute withdrawal from the fair itself), worldwide supply chain issues and skyrocketing inflation-the prevailing mood at Frankfurt is a sort of giddy gratitude: to see old friends and international colleagues in person, to discuss deals over a table instead of a screen, and to party for three nights running, even in a city as oft-maligned as Germany's financial capital.
More than 93,000 trade visitors attended 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. this year, up from 36,000 in 2021, though total figures were still half those recorded in pre-pandemic 2019.
Organisers said the figures "reaffirmed" the fair's position as "the most important international meeting point for the book and media industry". Over 4,000 exhibitors from 95 countries were present in the halls, in the Literary Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg) and in the new workstations. The LitAg hosted 300 agents at more than 450 workplaces and was overbooked.
Private visitor numbers were also up to 87,000 this year, from 37,500 last year. However total figures were half the number recorded in the last pre-pandemic year of 2019, when the organisers recorded 302,267 total visitors.
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., held last week from Wednesday to Sunday, released its preliminary attendance numbers. A press release stated that 93,000 trade visitors attended the fair this year, up from 36,000 in 2021. In addition, 87,000 members of the public came to the fair, compared with 37,500 in 2021. This brings the total attendees to a total of 180,000 people. The number is up compared with 2021, but is still half the number of recorded attendees compared with the last pre-pandemic year of 2019, when the organizers recorded organizers reported 302,267 total visitors.
The number of exhibitors this year was 4,000, coming from 95 countries. This is once again a significant drop from 2019, when the total was 7,450. The fairgrounds reflected the change, as the aisles were notably wider and exhibitions sparser. The Literary Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg) attracted 300 agencies - down slightly from 2019, when there were 35 - who filled out 450 workstations.
The crashing of the pound in recent weeks has hit costs for 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. attendees this week, but publishers and agents insist there is a silver lining for rights and export sales to the US.
Adam Freudenheim, m.d. at indie publisher Pushkin Press, told The Bookseller: "Clearly, the instability of the pound is not helpful to anyone doing business internationally. But the pound had already been falling against other currencies even before the recent disastrous ‘mini' budget. The one silver lining of the situation is that our international sales in other currencies-especially in the US-are worth more to us than six months or a year ago. Always look on the bright side."
Oneworld publisher Juliet Mabey summarised the situation as: "The pound tanking will make selling rights easier and buying rights more expensive." She said "a significant number of really big deals in the last couple of weeks" has made it feel like "business as usual" despite the economic chaos.
Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing c.e.o. Jonny Geller has warned that the current "tired" publishing model threatens to "dry itself out" if the role of the agent - and their relationship with publishers - isn't reimagined to become more of a partnership.
Speaking at 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. of United Talent Agency's (UTA) merger with Curtis Brown earlier this year, Geller said the move had "been in our thinking for 20 years" and that "we built ourselves to a certain size where we could go no further without a partner."
"If you stay in your lane it can run out of tarmac," he said, adding that "publishing at the moment has a real choice to make" about how opportunities for authors - whether they involve TV or film adaptations or other opportunities, such as television presenting - are handled between agents and publishers.
"Agencies will have to work out the conflict of interest issue [and ask]: can I represent to get the best possible deal for my client but also be a partner in the exploitation of what they've created?" he said. "Publishers will now be faced with more and more demands on bigger clients, brands, with agents saying: ‘I'm sorry, your publicity department is very good, but I need more than that'. And that will put a lot of pressure on an already very pressurised business. That will be international. And they will need to respond to that."
CHICAGO (AP) - As the new school year swings into gear, some students carry heavier worries than keeping up with homework: Demand has been growing steadily for children's books that address traumatic events such as school shootings.
Sales of books for young readers on violence, grief, and emotions have increased for nine straight years, with nearly six million copies sold in 2021 - more than double the amount in 2012, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks U.S. retail sales of print books.
As anxiety and depression rates have soared among young Americans, educators and advocates say children's books can play a role in helping them cope.
"While it might be second nature to try to shield kids from the harsher realities of life and scary news, it's proving difficult to avoid big society issues," said Kristine Enderle, editorial director at Magination Press, the children's book publishing arm of the American Psychological Association. "Kids face these issues and challenges in their day-to-day life."
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence over the past few decades, from pipe dream to reality, has been staggering. A.I. programs have long been chess and Jeopardy! Champions, but they have also conquered poker, crossword puzzles, Go, and even protein folding. They power the social media, video, and search sites we all use daily, and very recently they have leaped into a realm previously thought unimaginable for computers: artistic creativity.
Given this meteoric ascent, it's not surprising that there are continued warnings of a bleak Terminator-style future of humanity destroyed by superintelligent A.I.s that we unwittingly unleash upon ourselves. But when you look beyond the splashy headlines, you'll see that the real danger isn't how smart A.I.s are. It's how mindless they are-and how delusional we tend to be about their so-called intelligence.
As it has for so many people, the pandemic has prompted some changes in my life, and one change in particular may prove surprising to some of my librarian friends and colleagues: I've resolved to only read the books I really want to read.
You see, I am an avid fiction reader. But I must confess that I have always been self-conscious about my reading tastes. As a librarian and reader's adviser, I always believed that I had to read serious nonfiction and not just fiction to be good at my job. And in retirement I've had a hard time shaking that feeling, even though so much of what I have learned in life I've learned from reading novels.
Apparently, I'm not alone. Nancy Pearl, the most notorious reader in our profession, shares similar feelings of angst over her fidelity to fiction.
In 1983, William Blatty-author of The Exorcist-sued the New York Times.1 His lawsuit alleged that the Times had incorrectly excluded his latest novel, Legion (a sequel to The Exorcist), from its bestseller list-the coveted ranking that purports to show the books that have sold the most copies that week in the United States. According to Blatty's lawyers, Legion had sold enough copies to warrant a spot on the list, so its absence was due to negligence or fraud, for which Blatty was entitled to compensation. The Times countered with what might sound like a surprising admission: the bestseller list is not mathematically objective; it is editorial content, which is protected by the First Amendment. The court ruled in favor of the New York Times.
The Blatty case draws attention to a fundamental truth about bestseller lists, one that often gets forgotten amid the drama of their weekly publication: they are not a neutral window into what the public is really reading. Rather, they reflect editorial decisions about how and what to count. Changes on the list might reflect changes in counting procedure, rather than changes in the market. Despite their lack of neutrality-or, perhaps, because of it-these editorial and counting decisions can have a big effect on which books and authors get the honor of appearing on the list; in turn, they shape the public's perception of what it is reading and what it should consider reading next.
What's new in the translation sector? What have we achieved, apart, together? As I think about this, I am sitting in the back of Conway Hall in London, at English PENSupported by eminent writers, this is the English branch of International Pen, which has centres in nearly 100 countries. It fights for freedom of expression and against political censorship. It campaigns for writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes murdered for their views. http://www.englishpen.org/'s annual International Translation Day conference for literary translation professionals. I'm tuning in to conversations about reading habits during the pandemic (more international, anecdotally - the idea being that readers have increasingly chosen to "travel through reading"); the big shift to online programming since 2020; the publisher/translator relationship (money, recognition, transparency); and more.
The room is not full - a hangover of these pandemic years; attracting in-person audiences is still proving tricky for event organisers. But the quality and intensity of the discourse are as high as always, and it feels good to be in a room together. So what is new? One thing that strikes me is that because most of us have been online so much more since 2020, there is increased visibility in the virtual sphere both for translators themselves and for the debates, often passionate, around the craft and politics of translation itself.
In 2012, I had an idea for a novel called The Desire Card, which centered around a sinister organization that promised "Any Wish Fulfilled for the Right Price." I'd been speaking to a doctor friend of mine about the difficulty of getting a liver transplant, and an idea gelled: What if someone who'd always been able to get anything he wanted in life desired a liver and contacted an organization to obtain it through back channels? I wrote the book, never imagining I would write four other interconnected novels, and sold it to a publisher who wanted more.
Great, right?
I sketched the idea for a sequel, which would become Prey No More by first writing it as a film and then using the script as an outline for the book. The publisher was pleased, so I wrote two more novels in the series, waiting for the day it would be released. The first book came out, but then there was no indication of a date for the sequel, nor were my royalties ever paid. I had four books in a series, only one of which had come out, with little chance the others would ever see the light of day, or that I'd get a penny for my work.
The remarkable thing about this violence-soaked novel narrated by a dead man is how full of life it is. Shehan Karunatilaka's The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida comes a decade after his rollicking debut Chinaman, which combined the love of cricket with the horror of Sri Lanka's civil war. Set at the tail end of the 80s, his second novel again plumbs national violence and atrocity, teasing out its roots in colonial history. It's also an offbeat love story, both romantic and platonic, and a whodunnit written in the urgent, intimate second person.
As the novel opens, Maali Almeida, a charming, dilettantish photographer with a weakness for gambling and beautiful boys, wakes up dead. He finds himself in an afterlife that's just as threatening and confusing as the living world, a busy and chaotic realm drawing on Sri Lankan myth and folklore as well as Dante's Inferno.
Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz's profoundly literary meta-mystery novel from 2016, might not seem like an obvious choice for adaptation to a television series. So much about the novel is about the practice of reading. The story begins when a book editor named Susan Ryeland presents a strange event that changed her life: a mystery that came to her attention when she read the manuscript of a new mystery novel called Magpie Murders. That mystery manuscript is unfinished, though, which means Susan has to go and hunt for the answer herself. But that novel also contains the clues to a real-life mystery, and it is up to Susan (and her own readers) to dig them out and connect them to the real-life circumstance. Horowitz's Magpie Murders is pure pleasure-a beguiling and refreshing experiment with the traditional murder mystery genre that follows the rules while also taking on an entirely new dimension.
Horowitz himself wrote the script for the new television adaptation of the book. Fortunately, he, a veteran of TV whodunits (having created the Midsomer Murders series back in 1997) as well as the author of numerous detective series, knows how to tell a murder mystery differently, depending on form and media. And so the television incarnation of Magpie Murders, which premieres in the US on Masterpiece Mystery on PBS on Sunday, October 16th, doesn't change the game so much as change the sport.
It becomes a brisk adventure with multiple story-lines rather than the striated literary puzzle it once was. It is now a theoretical demonstration of the fun of reading, rather than a practical exercise in the fun of reading. But this is okay. Magpie Murders knows the limits of its new form, and it would rather present an engaging mystery than try to replicate the experience of reading the book.
Thomas Keneally, one of Australia's most acclaimed novelists, says he will share a $50,000 literary prize with his fellow nominees.
The 87-year-old novelist, who has previously won the Man Booker prize and the Miles Franklin, was announced on Thursday as the winner of the ARA Historical Novel prize for his latest novel Corporal Hitler's Pistol.
Receiving the prize, Keneally said he would give $4,000 (£2,200) to the six authors who made the ARA prize longlist: Karen Brooks, Lauren Chater, Steven Carroll, Portland Jones, Kim Kelly and David Whish-Wilson.
"I wanted to look after some of the other writers on the longlist because writing - for young and old - is often a matter of combining pittances to make a living," Keneally told ABC Radio.
"Writing a novel at 87 is exactly the same process as writing at the age of 25," he added, "but we need to win a prize occasionally so we can maintain the delusion that we're a novelist."
One of the UK's most successful children's authors says schools should teach black history all year round.
Malorie Blackman said history lessons should tell "the whole truth" of the British Empire, such as Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Schools in England are not currently required to teach any black history.
Best known for young-adults' series Noughts and Crosses, recently turned into a BBC drama, Blackman's work has played a significant role in diversifying children's literature over the past 30 years, exploring race and identity issues. Her new memoir has been published through the rapper Stormzy's brand, Merky books, created to increase representation in literature.