Smaller and better: that's my feeling after four days at
the 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair, the major event on the world publishing calendar.
The Frankfurter Buchmesse organisers condensed the layout
of the fair this year, bringing English-language publishers from the distant
and cavernous Hall 8 to reside across three levels in Hall 6. With the New
Zealand stand well positioned on the ground floor, it was a lot easier to
connect for meetings in the other halls and to feel part of this great global village
of books.
Compliments again to Anne de Lautour and the Publishers
Association of New Zealand for the very cool and visible design of the
collective stand on which Oratia Media took its place alongside 14 other Kiwi
publishers – and to our stand staff Christiane Arheilger and Heike Reifgens. There’s
a supportive spirit of collegiality and fun all week (rated as the week’s best
by many fair regulars).
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| With PANZ Director Anne de Lautour on the NZ stand |
Meetings here are conducted at half-hour intervals, which
on the busiest days this year meant over 15 official encounters with
publishers, agents, distributors and service providers at our stands and theirs
– before dinners and gatherings into the night. Along with reviewing current
business relationships, presenting new books, seeking rights deals and pitching
new series and book ideas, I started communicating our soon-to-be-public
rebranding and development plans.
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| At the New Zealand party: Michael Duckworth (University of Hawaii Press) and Scott Beatty (Trajectory) |
Smaller and better also describes how the book industry is
looking now. Sure, bookstores have closed, publishers have pulled out of some
markets and tightened their lists, and ebooks have generally not delivered on
their promise. But a leaner publishing industry has got smarter and is seeing a
consumer move back to print, and for independents there’s market share to be grabbed
and easier international connections to be made.
For our authors, exposure to the international publishing
community will hopefully lead to seeing their books overseas and in
translation. With our Chinese agent Fanny Yu of CA-Link I toasted the sale of
mainland Chinese rights to Dawn McMillan and Ross Kinnaird’s I Need a New Bum!, and I got a good
response to their new book Mister Spears
and his Hairy Ears. Our new international picture book series Indigenous
Voices, which includes a great new story from Tim Tipene, is exciting a lot of
interest also. And the September release of Hirini Moko Mead’s classic Te Toi Whakairo: The Art of Maori Carving
is also promising good sales offshore.
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| With Fanny Yu of our Chinese agency CA-Link |
I was also delighted to present some fine NZ books from
outside our own programme, including Neil Coleman’s hard-hitting YA novel Roskill, David Bell’s YA fantasy novel The Dog Hunters (first in a very
promising series), David Lupton and Leonel Alvarado’s beautiful The Divine Remains, and the sumptuous Coast, Country, Neighbourhood, City,
which profiles the work of design studio Isthmus.
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| Our section of the NZ stand |
So much of world publishing is dominated by big US, UK, French
and German corporations. Alongside good meetings with colleagues from all those
markets, this year Frankfurt brought me great exchanges with publishers from publishers
as far flung as Belarus, Chile, El Salvador, Ireland ... Big is beautiful but so
is small.
Peter Dowling is
managing director of Oratia Media (www.oratiamedia.com) and publisher of its books division Libro
International (
www.librointernational.com),
and is international councillor of the
Publishers Association of New Zealand.
