Professional trade visitors at the 2025 Frankfurter Buchmesse crowded Hall 1.2, among other key venues of the sprawling show. Image: FBM, Anett Weirauch
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Opening Up New Perspectives’
As is the custom of Frankfurter Buchmesse, the 77th edition has a group of informative numbers about attendance and participation at midweek in the five-week tradeshow—the world’s largest in terms of the trade book publishing industry.
The first three days, of course—Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—are concentrated on professional trade visitors, with members of the public coming onto Messe Frankfurt during the course of Friday’s events and throughout the weekend.
During the first three days October 15 through 17, we’re told, trade visitors from 125 countries accounted for an increase of more than three-percent beyond the previous year’s turnout.
The total number of trade visitors is expected to amount to 118,500 by Sunday, the last day of the show, surpassing 2024’s total of 115,000.
This year, some 4,350 exhibitors have been presenting their books, products and services at the fair, another figure ahead of the 2024 total of exhibitors (4,300).
The sold-out Literary Agents & Scouts Center—called the LitAg, of course—has hosted 321 agencies from 32 countries, organizers tell the press.
In the LitAg and nearby Publishers Rights Center, 591 tables were sold in total, by comparison to 593 tables in 2024.
Deals and Commentary
Notable book deals mentioned in news reports have included that hit the headlines this week included:
- HarperCollins acquiring four new titles from the international author of Yellowface, R. F. Kuang;
- A transatlantic deal for The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East by the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore; and
- Faber’s buy of Booker Prize shortlistee (for The Rest of Our Lives) Ben Markovits’ new novel Starting Out.
At the fair’s Opening Press Conference, German author Nora Haddada’s address may have recalled for some the late Joan Didion in her appeal for action from the writers of her generation. “We don’t have to be cowards. We can provoke,” she said.
Vanina Colagiovanni, publishing director with Gog & Magog in Argentina, and Mehar Anaokar, an editor with Profile Books’ Serpent’s Tail Classics in the United Kingdom, were asked about their participation in the new Frankfurt Global Network grant program, and were quick to highlight the importance of Buchmesse for international exchange.
The Publishing Perspectives Forum‘s Executive Talks this year mirrored the book fair’s focus on women in publishing, featuring events with Perminder Mann, CEO of Simon & Schuster UK and International, and Véronique Cardi, CEO of Hachette Livre’s Éditions JC Lattés and Éditions du Masque in Frankfurt Studio; and Chantal Restivo Alessi, CEO of HarperCollins International and its chief digital officer, and Núria Cabuti, the CEO of Penguin Random House Editorial in Spain, at a separate event called CEO Talk. On Friday, Bonnier Germany CEO Christian Schumacher-Gebler joined us in the forum for our Executive Talk, making many sharp points about allowing publishers to have their own heads.
Elsewhere at the show, Frankfurter Buchmesse president and CEO Juergen Boos, highlighted the power of stories and storytelling: “Frankfurter Buchmesse demonstrates what literature is capable of: it connects people, it tolerates contradictions and it opens up new perspectives.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on Frankfurter Buchmesse is here; more on international book fairs and publishing-industry trade shows is here; more on world book publishing and politics is here; and more on the German book publishing industry and book business is here.
A version of this story originally appeared in our Publishing Perspectives 2025 Show Magazine. If you can’t be with us in Frankfurt this year, be sure to download our PDF of the full magazine here.
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