All’s fair
The world’s biggest booktrade fest provides food for thought for Michael Allen
GRUMPY OLD BOOKMAN
A few references in recent book-trade blogs have reminded me that the Frankfurt Book Fair is now over for another year. Should I have needed any further prompting, there was a useful column about the Fair by literary agent Piers Blofeld in the December issue of this very magazine. The Frankfurt Buchmesse, as the
Germans call it, is still the largest and most important annual gathering of book-trade people in Europe. Its substantial website describes it as ‘a meeting place for the industry’s experts and the most important marketplace for books, media, rights and licences worldwide. Be they publishers, booksellers, agents, film producers or authors – each year in October, they all come together and create something new.’ And, as Piers made clear, it’s a spot where literary agents work extremely hard at selling their writers’ books on a face-to-face basis. In short, anyone who matters in the book trade is very likely to be there. I have never actually been to Frankfurt myself, but for about twenty years, give or take, I certainly went to the London equivalent. The London