Taking questions from journalists at the September 24 Frankfurter Buchmesse news conference are, from left, Simone Bühler, head of the guest of honor program at Frankfurt; Ines Bachor, Frankfurt’s public relations manager; Juergen Boos, Buchmesse president and CEO; and Torsten Casimir, Buchmesse spokesperson. Image: FBM, Simone Hellwig
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘FBM24 is Reading: Read. Reflect. Relate.’
In a news conference in Frankfurt this morning (September 24), members of Frankfurter Buchmesse‘s leadership pointed to factors indicating that this year’s 76th iteration of the world’s largest trade show for the international book business (October 16 to 20) will be a larger event focused at many points on the publishing industry’s foundations in each era’s issues and social context.
Both its breadth of programming and in the sheer level of participation—already showing up in activity on the new Frankfurt Connect platform—regular trade visitors at Frankfurt 2024 will sense a newly expansive energy, anchored in this year’s three-word slogan: Read. Reflect. Relate.
During the run of the event, more than 1,000 speakers, many of them authors, will be seen on 15 stages in some 650 events comprising more than 570 hours of programming, in numbers gone over by the fair’s spokesperson, Torsten Casimir, who followed Frankfurt’s president and CEO Juergen Boos at the lectern.
A new industry-sector area located in Messe Frankfurt’s Hall 1.2 will dedicate 8,000 square meters (86,100 square feet) to industry content categories New Adult, Romantasy, Dark College, and LGBTQ-focused publishing houses.
In one sign of sustainability awareness, the show this year will be rolling out as many as 30,000 square meters less carpeting in the halls (322,900 square feet less) than in years past.
The Guest of Honor Italy program, with its delegation including some 90 authors, is expected to feature 220 new releases in its guest of honor pavilion in the Forum, designed by the Milan-based Stefano Boeri Interiors to include two stages and as many as 50 events planned for that venue alone. As many as 64 of the new books from Italian authors are said to be supported by the guest of honor program’s funding for literary translation.
Some 60 support programs from 40 nations are cooperating with the trade show this year.
Advance ticket sales are reported to be running as much as 30- to 40-percent higher than they were last year, but one aspect of this might be driven by a new plan for limited weekend public-access ticketing, which might have caused local weekend visitors to buy early online.
With some 4,000 or more exhibitors on contract, Boos told the German press corps this morning that he’s satisfied with where things stand three weeks from the opening of the trade show, and he noted that more exhibitors are anticipated this year from the United States, as well as from the Arab world and Asia. Organizers confirm that in addition, there will be exhibitors from Israel, including agencies in the Literary Agents and Scouts Center, called the “LitAg.”
As Publishing Perspectives has reported, the LitAg, the business heart of Frankfurt’s sprawling expanse, sold out months ago, its 540 tables paid for by 320 agencies from 31 countries. It’s in the LitAg in Hall 6.2 that the propulsive dominance of Frankfurt among the world’s book industry trade shows will see most of the event’s business done. The adjacent spillover facility, the Publishers Rights Center, also at or near capacity, will return this year to host international rights directors, licensing specialists, and other professionals working across publishing and its several associated storytelling industries of film, television, and more.
For the first time—much as Hall 6.1 contains a Comics Business Center, an all-new rights center, this one focused on gaming and development of books to games, will have a place at Frankfurt, and this is a new cooperative effort between Boos and Frankfurt with Bologna Children’s Book Fair (March 31 to April 3) and its director Elena Pasoli, supported by its Bologna Book Plus parallel program from Jacks Thomas.
Also among what Frankfurt staffers are calling “media neighborhoods,” Frankfurt Friday will include this year’s Book-to-Screen Day, while the Frankfurt Audio program in Hall 3.1 will expand to 640 square meters this year (6,888 square feet), almost twice the size of last year’s.
A series of programming events in Hall 4.0’s Frankfurt Studio will include the Publishing Perspectives Forum‘s discussion on Frankfurt Wednesday (October 16) at 4 p.m. on audiobook strategies with Penguin Random House’s Amanda D’Acierno and Bonnier UK’s Jon Watt.
Current Events, Driving Issues
If anything, one of the most significant developments of this year’s evocation of Frankfurt will be found in a growing embrace of the issue-driven importance of international publishing and books.
The Frankfurt Pavilion facility in the vast central Agora at Messe Frankfurt is this year the seat of another round of new branding, “Frankfurt Calling: Perspectives on Culture and Politics.” While issues localized to this venue will include human rights, the climate crisis, education, artificial intelligence, democratic values and more, there will be programming carefully aligned with current events found on almost every stage of the fair, from the International Stage in the foyer between Halls 5.1 and 6.1 to the Publishing Perspectives Forum and other program in Frankfurt Studio, as well as at the Guest of Honor Italy pavilion and at the Italian spazio, the huge, white, iconic Italian collective stand in Hall 5.0.
The “Frankfurt Calling” series of events is supported by Frankfurt partners including the United Nations, Amnesty International, Memorial, PEN Berlin, Correctiv, SZ and Bildungsstätte Anne Frank. Authors including Roberto Saviano, Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim, Eva Menasse, and Omri Boehm are to be featured in these events.
As part of this focus of debate and discussion, Publishing Perspectives will moderate a program called Democracy Depends on Reading: A Trinity of Freedoms Are Vital But Under Threat at 3 p.m. in Frankfurt Pavilion, a program from the International Publishers Association (IPA), with PEN International’s Ege Dündar; DTV Verlag and WEXFO’s Felicia Hoffman; Jean Poderos from Editions Courte et Longues; and Penguin Random House executive vice-president and chief legal counsel Anke Steinecke.
Emphasizing socio-political issues—and publishing’s importance in the field of debate—today’s news conference repeatedly came back to the fact that 2024 will stand as a kind of “year of issues” at Frankfurt, the book business’ hub of commercial concerns resting on a trade-show-wide conversation, both about the issues themselves and about how the world of books and literature handles those issues, responds to them, guides them, follows them, and engages with a world readership increasingly looking to books for stable assessment and factually accurate coverage.
Frankfurt spokesperson Torsten Casimir discusses issue-driven programming events at Frankfurter Buchmesse during the September 24 news conference. Image: Publishing Perspectives, FBM Video
In a taped conversation with Boos (embedded below), he tells the United States press contact for the fair, Erin Cox, that political action around Buchmesse, is currently not anticipated.
“Right now, we don’t see any planned demonstrations,” Boos says. “But actually, this is not the idea of a demonstration. A demonstration is a spontaneous thing.
“The thing is, our industry relies on diversity. If you have diversity, you have different opinions. And this is what’s reflected in literature. The good thing is we have people from among the nations coming, and it’s always a peaceful book fair. I’m expecting a peaceful Book Fair again, but also a book fair full of diversity and discussions.”
The Guest of Honor Italy program will contribute to the Frankfurt Pavilion focus on issues with a conversation between Saviano and the co-chair of PEN Berlin, Deniz Yücel, on Literature and Politics: Writing in Illiberal Times on Frankfurt Saturday, October 19 at 2 p.m.
There’s also to be a moderated reading by Antonio Scurati on his new Mussolini novel M. Das Buch des Krieges (M. The Book of War), which will be published in German by Tom Kraushaar’s Klett-Cotta during the week of the fair. That event is on Frankfurt Wednesday at 8 p.m., part of the Open Books series at Evangelische Akademie in the city center.
Kraushaar also joins us at Frankfurt Studio in a Publishing Perspectives Forum discussion, State of Independent Publishing, on October 18, Frankfurt Friday, with Nina von Moltke, co-founding president of Authors Equity in New York City, and the Netherlands’ Nelleke Geel, the founding publisher of Meridiaan Publishers.
The Turkish-British frequent author-speaker Elif Shafak will make an address about just that, the role of literature in today’s world at the fair’s invitational opening press conference (October 15), and at that night’s invitational opening ceremony, Claudia Roth, the German government’s minister of state for culture, will make opening remarks, while the Hessian minister/president Boris Rhein is also expected to participate.
Also in the opening ceremony, we anticipate hearing from:
- Frankfurt’s mayor, Mike Josef
- Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, chair of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Germany’s publishers and booksellers association
- Guest of Honor Italy keynote speakers Carlo Rovelli, Susanna Tamaro, and Stefano Zecchi
- Alessandro Giuli, the Italian minister of culture, representing Rome for the Meloni government
- Violinist Veronika Paleeva, double bassist Tim Roth, and guitarist Tomek Witiak
Europe’s fourth-largest book market, Italy—now on its second guest-of-honor turn at Frankfurt in 36 years—is to include in its author delegation Alessandro Baricco, Annalena Benini, Paolo Cognetti, Claudia Durastanti, Antonio Franchini, Nicola Lagioia, Claudio Magris, Francesca Melandri, and Igiaba Scego.
And here is the 14-minute conversation mentioned earlier, in which Erin Cox speaks with Juergen Boos.
See also:
Frankfurt’s Guerst of Honor Italy Pavilion: A Piazza
Yuval Noah Harari and Kohei Saito to Speak at Frankfurter Buchmesse
At Frankfurt: Friday Will Be Book-to-Screen Day 2024
Frankfurt: Guest of Honor Italy Announces Programming
Frankfurt Rights Meeting Opens: Newly Added Speakers
Rights Edition: Frankfurt’s 2024 ‘Centre of Words’ in Hall 4.1
Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024: Frankfurt Audio and The Arts+
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(For those new to Frankfurt, its hashtag is #FBM24, not FBF, because its name is Frankfurter Buchmesse.)
More from Publishing Perspectives on Frankfurter Buchmesse is here, more on international publishing conferences is here, more on politics is here, more on diversity is here, and more on the German book market is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.