at the fair but nevertheless want to explore business opportunities with publishers. Among the highlights of this year’s
Business Club schedule are interviews with Hachette CEO
Arnaud Nourry (October 14, 2–3 p.m.) and author Ken Follett
(October 15, 10–11 a.m.).
A new prefair opening conference—the Markets—will
replace last year’s Con Tec event (which had replaced Tools of
Change). With digital publishing now firmly a part of the book
business, and digital developments now permeating the fair,
the Markets pivots away from the trend of hosting Tools of
Change–like conference openers that focused on digital
developments. Instead, the Markets (October 13, 8 a.m.)
will seek to showcase publishing segments from seven regions
around the world, highlighting opportunities for international business and partnerships.
Of course, rights dealing remains the lifeblood of the
Frankfurt Book Fair. In 2015, Frankfurt’s Literary Agents &
Scouts Centre (LitAg) will again offer a record number of tables,
featuring more than 300 agencies and more than 600 registered
agents from more than 30 countries. With the hall shift in
2015, LitAg will now be under the same roof as English-language publishers. And, it will also have a new layout that
Frankfurt officials say will “guarantee the best possible
working conditions” for agents. At last year’s fair, HarperCollins
CEO Brian Murray spoke of a publishing industry that is
embracing experimentation. The changes at this year’s
Frankfurt Book Fair are designed to reflect and accommodate
changes in the industry, and to set the stage for the next act in
global publishing.
BY ANDREW RICHARD ALBANESE
The Frankfurt Book Fair is no stranger to change: over the past decade, it has aggressively pursued new initiatives aimed at including the full horizon of storytelling in digital media, in films and games as well as books. But 2015 may well be one of the big- gest years of change ever for the fair, which runs October 14–18. This most visible change: English-language publishers will have a new home, moving from Hall 8—on the
outskirts of the fairgrounds—to Hall 6, the middle of the
action. Juergen Boos, director of the fair, explained that for
much of the event’s history, most English-language publishers were rights sellers, which meant that reps from other
territories would trek to Hall 8 to see them. “Now, in a global
market, this is not the relationship anymore,” Boos said at
the close of last year’s fair, noting that the new layout reflects
the increasingly diverse, international nature of the publishing business. The aim, he says, is to ensure that no visitor
has to walk for more than five minutes to get to a meeting,
whether with American, Asian, British, European, or Latin
American publishers.
The hall shift isn’t the only change on tap for 2015. This year
will mark the second year of the Frankfurt Business Club,
which debuted in 2014. The business club offers fairgoers a
premium experience, including a program of exclusive high-caliber events and a place for fairgoers to conduct business,
including new tech innovators who may not be exhibiting
FRANKFURT’S NEXT ACT
;e 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair
will feature some of the biggest
changes to the show in decades