By Lori Perkins
It’s been at least 20 years since I attended the Frankfurt Book Fair, the annual gathering of book peeps to sell international rights. That year, I attended because I had just sold the rights to Jenna Jameson’s autobiography HOW TO MAKE LOVE LIKE A PORN STAR and Jenna was meeting with foreign publishers. It was a very different time and marketplace.
This year I attended as the Publisher of Riverdale Avenue Books, where I met with our foreign agents, as well as foreign publishers, to sell rights to our books.
The city of Frankfurt has changed since I was last here. Skyscrapers dominate the horizon, which you see very little of in other European cities. The population is also more diverse and everyone speaks English, which is a result of the internet.
The book fair is much larger now too. Gargantuan, in fact. Publishers from all over the world come to display their books for the coming year, as well as book manufacturers, literary agents, scouting agencies and some TV and film producers.
I met with agents from the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam, as well as audio producers based throughout the world, and foreign scouts for various publishers. One of my agent colleagues told me that her best-selling title has been sold to 47 countries.
Twenty years ago many of these markets were too small to compete in the global marketplace, but with the advent of ebooks and the internet, the global publishing marketplace has been transformed.
Frankfurt used to be a niche publishing event that only the sales part of the publishing business paid attention to. Now I would say it is the most important book fair of the year.
On a different side note, I flew in Condor Air, a German-based airline I was unfamiliar with. I was able to get a reasonably priced direct flight three weeks before I left and the service was excellent. In addition, as many of you know, I am a breast cancer survivor, and the airline participates in FlyPink, a breast cancer awareness program, which made me that much happier that I had chosen them for my flight. https://www.condor.com/de/blog/hinter-den-kulissen/flypink/
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