On Friday evening, the large space between the stages of the Frankfurt Book Fair slowly began to fill up – not only professionals in the field can enter this most important literary event on the weekend with tickets. On Saturday, you can no longer see business-dressed representatives of the book business eating snacks or sipping beer at the tables outside, but book fans dressed as characters from their favorite books and elements of fantastic literature. True, this year the Frankfurt Book Fair no longer allows you to enter with replica weapons – and before that you could see a lot of teenagers “armed” with artificial bats and rifles.
By the way, this year it was decided to limit the number of visitors on Saturday, as last year it was already seen that it was difficult to cope with such flows, so 60,000 visitors were admitted to the fair on Saturday.
“Scanpix”/DPA photo/Frankfurt Book Fair
Party at the Irish Stand
Meanwhile, already on Friday evening, representatives of the publishing business could be seen packing their things and getting ready for the airport. But before that, of course, it was necessary to celebrate. The tradition of the fair is that the stands of publishing houses and countries hold parties where guests are entertained (the Lithuanian stand held a party on Thursday evening). Usually they take place on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but this year Ireland decided to make an exception – they organized a grand celebration on Friday, as they announced, 500 guests. The atmosphere was truly Irish – traditional songs were played by musicians, and those who came were treated to Guinness beer and, symbolically, “Writer’s tears” whiskey. Before the celebration began, the organizers warned everyone to be careful with this whiskey, because it could literally end in tears. The warnings didn’t seem to work as several crates of whiskey bottles were consumed within half an hour.
After the celebration at the fair in Frankfurt, the remaining representatives of the publishing business scattered around the surrounding bars, and the biggest parties, as always, take place in the bars of the Frankfurter Hof Hotel, which has become one of the symbols of the fair.
On Saturday, even the press center of the fair was overwhelmed – it was bustling in the previous days, now it is packed. But for journalists, the work on Saturday is not very easy – mainly because of internet disruptions. The Wi-Fi connection is stuck due to the large number of people connecting at the same time. There are also problems with event translations – many events are held in German and if it is announced that there will be an English translation, it really means nothing – on Saturday alone there were a couple of events that were not translated synchronously. “It’s a mistake,” the representatives of the fair simply shrugged.
“Scanpix”/DPA photo/Frankfurt Book Fair
R. Saviano’s tour at the fair
Meetings and events at the fair continue, although some professionals have already left it. If Yuval Noah Harari and Anne Applebaum were in the spotlight in the previous days, on Saturday the popular Italian writer Roberto Saviano organized a real marathon of meetings at the fair.
„Scanpix”/DPA nuotr./Roberto Saviano
The author of Gomorrah was not included in the official delegation, no doubt because of his criticism of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. More than 40 Italian writers have signed an open letter condemning the move, calling it censorship. Despite the fact that the Italian delegation decided not to include him, the writer was invited to the fair by German publishers. In the meetings on Saturday, he talks about what it means to write in “illiberal times” – this is how he described the situation that is currently in Italy.
On Friday, several Italian writers who signed the open letter organized the discussion “The Return of the Ghosts” at the fair. Admittedly, although the event was announced in the Italian Pavilion, it was not held in the impressive piazza-like Italian Pavilion, but in the Italian stand across the hall. So there is no shortage of talk about democracy and challenges at the fair.
The popularity of books for younger readers
From the first days, the participants of the fair did not hide their optimism – revenues in the field of books are growing, the contracts signed this year also give hope that the market will not stagnate.
“Scanpix”/DPA photo/Frankfurt Book Fair
Juergen Boss, head of the Frankfurt fair, is also satisfied with the results of the fair. The number of visitors to the fair from the publishing industry increased by 7.5 percent compared to last year. to 114,000. But he acknowledged that the number of booths has not reached pre-pandemic levels.
He also said that one of the most noticeable trends this year is the popularity of “young adult” and “new adult” books for younger readers. This can be seen at the fair on Friday and Saturday – at the stands set up outside, where autographs are given mainly by writers of this field, queues of several hundred people stretch out.
Another clear trend is that young readers often read in English, so efforts are being made to invite more writers who write in English to the fair, which has often focused mainly on German writers.
The fact that more and more readers are reading books in English is noticeable in a considerable part of Europe – in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, according to published data, about a quarter of the books sold are in English. The countries least affected by this trend are Italy and Spain.
“Scanpix”/DPA photo/Frankfurt Book Fair
Dutch publishers say that this is partly due to the TikTok phenomenon – readers want to read books they read about on this social network (so sometimes even Dutch translations are published with English titles), English books are cheaper, and there is no need to wait for their translations . The head of the Czech publishing house, which also publishes Dan Brown’s books, said that if the translation of the new book by this writer is not published as soon as possible, it could lose up to 10,000 unsold copies of the book – readers will buy the book in English.
New trends are noticeable
The fair offers a wealth of information that allows you to get a picture of global trends in the publishing business. One of them is the sharp growth in the popularity of fantasy and romance books. Ginger Clark of Ginger Clark Literary noted in Publishers Weekly that horror books are also making a comeback: “I’ve heard that vampires are back from the dead.”
General trends show that the popularity of non-fiction books is falling (this is especially noticeable in travel book publishing, which has somewhat recovered after the pandemic), while the sales of fiction books are increasing. True, experts say that the numbers of non-fiction books also depend heavily on the big bestsellers that appear that year – let’s say this happened after the Prince Harry biography came out.
The biggest growth was in Spain and Portugal, while sales fell in France and Great Britain, and book publishers in New Zealand had the hardest time.
Another trend is the growing price of books, they jumped by about 12 percent in the world.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, it can be seen that a lot of attention is paid to Asian literature (and next year the fair will be the guest of honor of the Philippines), this year there is also a separate pavilion for discussions on Asian literature, and this is reflected in the numbers – in Europe, especially in Great Britain, there is a noticeable increase in Asian countries, primarily in Japan and the rise in sales of books by South Korean writers. By the way, sales of books by foreign writers are extremely low in Japan itself. One of the hits is the book “Before the coffee gets cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, which came out a few years ago, but is still a great seller.
Scanpix/AFP Photo/Frankfurt Book Fair
The “TikTok” phenomenon is not slowing down – many publishers admit that it has become one of the most effective means of popularizing books. The “TikTok” wave can also bring long-published books to new life. It is not for nothing that the TikTok awards are also presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
15 minutes of attention
Of course, the trends in each country are different, but you can get a general picture.
Let’s say that popular topics in Italy are family, relationships, politics, although the sales of non-fiction books have fallen somewhat, and children’s books are also being bought less. Last year’s best-selling book was Joel Dicker’s new novel, which sold 213,000 copies. As in many other countries, books for young adults are very popular.
In Germany, women are the main buyers, but publishers notice that if earlier efforts were made to focus on readers over 40 years old, now the 18-30 year old category has become very important.
Religion is a popular topic in the US, in addition to trends common to the rest of the world. In this country, audiobook sales have already overtaken e-book purchases. By the way, audiobooks, which were talked about a lot at the fair a few years ago, are not equally popular in different countries – for example, their sales are extremely poor in Spain, but they are popular in Scandinavia.
In France, thrillers, noir, science fiction and romance books are popular. Comic book sales fell here, as in many other European countries.
Scanpix/AFP Photo/Frankfurt Book Fair
Polish publishers are happy that the figures of readers’ reading habits are the best in ten years (43 percent of people read at least one book in a year). The Nobel Prize of Olga Tokarczuk helped the popularization of Polish literature on the international market – now her books have been translated into 50 languages and it is presented as proof of the quality of this country’s creativity.
In the Czech Republic, it is noticeable that the popularity of political books has decreased – apparently, with the war in Ukraine, people are less willing to pay attention to this topic, and 70% books are sold in this country before Christmas. By the way, one eloquent fact – studies show that the average Czech can concentrate for 15 minutes. Lack of concentration isn’t a new topic, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem for book publishers, and people continue to read books despite constant threats that they will disappear.
By the way, last year there was a lot of talk about the danger of artificial intelligence, this topic is relevant even now, but it seems that the mood is changing a little, now they are trying to analyze how to use it creatively.
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