A double interview: Frankfurter Buchmesse’s Juergen Boos and the Italian Publishers Association’s Innocenzo Cipolletta: ‘Great deals.’

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Cultural Heft, and Rights Sales Success

Having announced a total attendance of 230,000 trade and private visitors, Frankfurter Buchmesse this month was not only an overall success in terms of such robust attendance numbers, but also a demonstration of the value of its guest of honor program.

The moment is right to look at the program, as this year’s Guest of Honor Italy program brought the world industry full-circle: Italy was Frankfurt’s first annual guest of honor market, in 1988.

Thirty-six years later, the 2024 Guest of Honor Italy—artfully themed “Roots in the Future”—deployed a program that celebrated and expanded the reach of both that market’s iconic cultural breadth and its B2B goals of sending more contemporary Italian literature into the international marketplace.

After all, the obvious logic goes, a world that already loves Italian art, cinema, food, tourism, Vespas, and history, should also be reading more of that unique nation’s best writings of the moment.

For today’s article (October 28), Publishing Perspectives has conducted post-Frankfurt exchanges with Juergen Boos, president and CEO of Buchmesse, and with Innocenzo Cipolletta, president of the Association of Italian Publishers (Associazione Italiana Editori, AIE).

Our interest here is to focus on the intent of the trade fair’s yearly guest of honor program—which has already announced a fine trio of guests from Asia, Europe, and Latin America:

• The Philippines for 2025 (October 15 to 19)
• The Czech Republic for 2026 (October 7 to 11)
• Chile for 2027 (October 6 to 10)

And in the afterglow of the Italian program, we’re also interested in how the experience played out for the Italian team. As many of our readers know, a Frankfurt guest of honor can be years in the conceptualizing stages and many long months in actual planning and execution.

Boos: ‘115,000 Trade Visitors From 153 Countries’

“The goals of the fair’s guest of honor program,” Frankfurt’s Juergen Boos says, “are to strengthen the guest country’s international network as well as expand the number of books and authors translated into other languages and being introduced to new readers. This year, the book fair was incredibly well-attended with 115,000 trade visitors from 153 countries, so it was a great year for Italy to be featured in order to reach a wide, industry audience from around the world.

A total “220 books from and about Italy were published in the German-speaking markets since autumn 2023, and we had more than 90 Italian authors in Frankfurt, participating in programs in and around the book fair.”Juergen Boos, Frankfurter Buchmesse

“I’m pleased to report,” Boos says, “that from what we gathered, 220 books from and about Italy were published in the German-speaking markets since autumn 2023, and we had more than 90 Italian authors in Frankfurt, participating in programs in and around the book fair.

“Among them were big names including Roberto Saviano, Donatella di Pietrantonio, Antonio Scurati, Francesca Melandri, Claudia Durastanti, and Igiaba Scego. These author events at the fair were well-visited—some were standing room only—and we heard several Italian authors speaking about the importance of being in Frankfurt.”

What’s more, Boos notes, with its cultural program packing in audiences in its Stefano Boeri-designed pavilion, Italy also went to the mat to produce a huge business-focused hub of business activity on its collective stand in Hall 5.0.

“There were 205 Italian publishers, agents, and industry service providers presenting themselves at the fair across some 1,600 square meters of exhibition space [17,200 square feet],” Boos says, “The Italian Publishers Association organized an Italian trade program at the collective stand, which was incredibly well-attended, from what I learned. We also heard that Italian publishers and agencies had packed calendars and were very satisfied with the number of additional business and rights deals made.”

Cipolletta: ‘Strengthening Ties With the Rest of the World’

The Italian publishers’ Innocenzo Cipolletta, speaking from Milan, is candid in telling Publishing Perspectives that the programming breadth Boos is praising was something the organizing team wasn’t sure would fly.

“We were a bit apprehensive,” Cipolletta says, “about presenting exhibitors with such an extensive professional program, made up of as many as 21 events”—on the collective stand’s own stage—”in a demanding context like Frankfurt, where everyone has a busy schedule.

“Instead,” he says, “the full halls confirmed to us that the choice was the right one. Having engaged Italian and foreign publishers and book professionals in such high-profile sessions has paid off.

“In particular,” he says, “we believe that the meetings dedicated to the most popular genres in Italy helped to make us even better known to the professional attendees, while the international panels on the most topical issues—artificial intelligence, promotion of reading and more—have strengthened the fabric of ties that Italian publishing has with the rest of the world at all levels, including institutional ones and among our counterpart associations.

“At the moment,” Cipolletta interjects a touch of special pride, “I want to mention that both the president of the Federation of European Publishers (FEP), Ricardo Franco Levi, and the vice-president of the International Publishers Association (IPA), Giovanni Hoepli, are Italian.

Boos: Guest of Honor as ‘a First Step’

This year also marked the 10th anniversary of the Guest of Honor Finland program at Frankfurt, and the Finnish Literature Exchange, FILI held a major celebration of what it reported a year ago was Finnish literature’s all-time high in international rights sales, something the organization’s chief, Tiia Strandén, continues to attribute to the momentum kicked off at Buchmesse 2014.

Boos emphasizes that this is the nature of a guest of honor program’s viability over time. It arives as an event that ‘s more than a one-off effort: it’s the opening of a long-running endeavor.

“The guest of honor program” he says, “is often the first step in expanding the reach of a country’s culture and literature. The second step is up to the guest country to take, as Finland has illustrated over the last 10 years. We’ll see the steps Italy takes in the coming months and years.

“Continuing to support the country’s cultural sector and growing and strengthening the publishing scene’s networks that are forged at the book fair will help bring more Italian books to new markets around the world.”

And while Boos concedes, “It was wonderful to have so many Italian writers at the book fair this year, allowing publishers from around the world to get to know their work, it’s even more crucial,” he says, “to have events with translators, agents, publishers, and organizations that can help build that bridge to bring Italian writers and readers together in any language, anywhere. These two types of events go hand-in-hand and I’m glad that the book fair is able to not only introduce writers but also provide a pathway for them to reach new readers.”

Cipolletta: ‘Great Deals’ in Rights Transactions

How the results of the program’s results look from the Italian side, Cipolletta says, confirm the promising performance that Boos is referencing.

“Great deals in fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, comics—all the genres we talked about in Frankfurt, both with authors and in the Italian collective exhibition.”Innocenzo Cipolletta, AIE

“Italian publishers were satisfied,” Cipolletta says. “They had great deals in fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, comics—all the genres we talked about in Frankfurt, both with authors and in the Italian collective exhibition. And in many other cases that may not have seen a deal close,” he says, “Good contacts were made.”

In fiction, he has quite a list ready. Some of the examples he mentions include “L’anniversario, a new novel by Andrea Bajani that Feltrinelli will publish in January, has already been sold worldwide. And Tutto chiede salvezza, by Daniele Mencarelli and published by Mondadori, has been sold into 15 countries.

“Alessia Gazzola had a great response to her new project, Miss Bee from Longanesi,” he says, referring to one of the publishing houses of Gruppo editoriale Mauri Spagnol, or GeMS. “And Rokia,” he says, “the queen of the domestic dark romance, published by Magazzini Salani,” another of GeMS’ houses, “is increasingly appreciated.

“Beatrice Salvioni did quite well with her second novel, La Malacarne from Einaudi, after the great success of her first. Literary agent Carmen Prestia announced that the novel will be published in Germany by Penguin Random House for English-language markets, France, Spain, Eastern European countries, Serbia, Poland, Holland, Finland, and Denmark.

“And as for nonfiction, he says, Spera, the autobiography of Pope Francis, published by Mondadori, will be released in 80 countries.

“Andrea Gessner, the publisher of Nottetempo, is talking about ‘an unprecedented interest in our books and in Italian nonfiction in general, especially the more literary kind and in kids’ books.”

“Among the most popular titles is Giulia Siviero’s essay Fare femminismo. Hoepli sold Irene Festa’s Moda Illustrata in Spain. We’re seeing great success also for Italian illustrators and children’s books. A volte arriva il buio by Francesco Morgando, published by Il Castoro, with illustrations by Melinda Berti, has attracted the interest of 25 international publishers.”

Boos and Cipolletta: More to Come

As both Cipolletta and Boos point out, more deals, more news, is ahead, and (as the Finns can tell you) likely to arrive long past the first week after the 2024 Buchmesse, part of what Publishing Perspectives will be bringing our readers in our Rights Roundup series and our rights editions.

“I expect we’ll get more reports of book deals from the Italian publishers in the coming weeks after everyone has had a nice long rest,” Boos says. “And the Philippines’ guest of honor activities are in full swing already. We got a sneak peek at their press conference on the last day of the professional fair, and we’re all looking forward to seeing how it develops.”

For his part, Cipolletta says, Italy’s participation as guest of honor at Frankfurter Buchmesse was “a great opportunity that we were able to seize,” he says, “but also, as we all saw, an opportunity for confrontation and debate, even tough debate.

“There were moments, in the months leading up to the event, of very strong tension that the Italian Publishers Association faced by placing itself in a position of listening to everyone and working unceasingly to protect the freedom of thought of authors in close and positive collaboration with Juergen Boos and his team.” As Publishing Perspectives readers know, this at times involved political controversy and led to the AIE’s decision to purposefully program debate into some of its events in venues such as the “Frankfurt Calling” issue-driven sessions, rather than trying to look past it.

“Frankfurt, for us,” Cipolletta now says, “was to be a square of free discussion, we worked to ensure that participation was maximum and plural. Having achieved that goal makes us proud.

“And the Italian publishers tell us of a great and increased attention to our books, which is already translating into an increase in the sale of rights.”

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Our 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair Magazine is now available in a digital edition here. 

You’ll read our focused coverage of issues and events in the Guest of Honor Italy program as well as market trends in Brazil, France, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, and Poland; perspectives on the international rights trade from Matthes & Seitz Berlin’s Meran Mentzel; and commentary from independent publishers from Greece, Colombia, and Kenya.

In addition, PEN International president emerita Jennifer Clement speaks to Publishing Perspectives on censorship ahead of the IPA’s International Publishers Congress (December 3-5); there’s an exit interview with the outgoing IPA president Karine Pansa of Brazil; a wide-ranging interview with Scholastic chief Peter Warwick; perspectives on audio in Italy from Mondadori’s Miriam Spinnato; and more.

More from Publishing Perspectives on Italy and its book publishing industry is here, and more on the Italian Publishers Association (AIE) is here. More on Frankfurter Buchmesse is here, more on translation is here, and more on the rights trade is here.

Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.