After going almost fully digital last year to curb the coronavirus spread, this year’s fair is returning as an in-person event but will still be a more muted version of past editions.
Fewer international exhibitors and authors are descending on the western German city than before Covid, and much of the action will be online.
Fair director Juergen Boos, who will host the opening press ceremony today, said “it’s still not a normal book fair” but offered a chance for the industry to “reconnect”.
It comes as the book business has been “doing pretty well over the past 18 months”, he said, with people in many countries using the slower pace of life during lockdown to read more – adolescents especially.
“Young people didn’t just want to play computer games all day,” Boos recently told reporters.
In the United States, printed book sales rose by more than 8% last year to record their best year in a decade, according to the NPD research group.
Growth was driven by teen categories but also adult non-fiction, as people turned to cookbooks and DIY books to pass the time at home.
In Germany, the European Union’s largest book market, bookstores used the shutdowns to expand their online sales, leading to a 20% jump in internet revenue to €2.2 billion (RM10.7 billion). Audio and ebooks also saw double-digit growth.
Christmas concerns
Books “proved to be a particularly resilient and popular medium during the pandemic”, Boos said.
But the news isn’t all good. The book trade, with global revenues of around US$100 billion annually, isn’t immune to the worldwide shortages of raw materials and supply chain disruptions roiling national economies as they rebound from the coronavirus downturn.
With the crucial Christmas holiday season fast approaching, publishers are sounding the alarm about paper and cardboard shortages, bottlenecks at shipping ports and a lack of lorry drivers.
“I fear that this Christmas, people cannot be sure of getting any book they want at short notice,” Jonathan Beck, head of German publishing house CH Beck, told the “Handelsblatt” financial daily.
He also warned that books could become more expensive.
Atwood phones in
This week’s Frankfurt gathering is the latest example of trade fairs stirring back to life, and comes after the German city of Munich welcomed 400,000 visitors to the IAA auto show last month.
Nevertheless, the pandemic will loom large over the Frankfurt fair. Daily visitor numbers are capped at 25,000 and fairgoers must show proof of vaccination, a negative test, or prove they have recovered from Covid.
Masks must be worn inside the conference centre and the aisles will be wider to avoid the usual shoulder-to-shoulder crowds at publishers’ booths.
More than 1,500 exhibitors from more than 70 countries will be present, well below the 7,500 exhibitors from over 100 countries that came in 2019.
Just 200 authors are travelling to Frankfurt. Uncertainty about travel restrictions and virus concerns are keeping many large publishing houses and big-name writers away, particularly from the US, Asia and South America.
As a result, much of the networking and haggling over licensing and translation rights will be done on digital platforms.
Canada, meanwhile, is getting a second chance as the guest of honour after last year’s Covid curbs upended the country’s plans for the fair.
A delegation of Canadian authors including Michel Jean, Dany Laferriere and Michael Crummey will be taking part in events open to the public.
But Canada’s star author, Margaret Atwood of “The Handmaid’s Tale” fame – a Frankfurt regular in recent years – will only be appearing via video link.
The book fair, which runs until Sunday, is the world’s oldest publishing trade event and dates back to the Middle Ages.