Due to “structural building inspections,” the Frankfurt Book Fair will refrain from using all three levels of Hall 6 at this year’s fair, the Bookseller reports, based on a recent letter sent to exhibitors. As a result, spaces for exhibitors and meetings will be shuffled to different places in the fair buildings. International exhibitors placed in Halls 6.1 and 6.2 will relocate to the central Hall 4.2. The literary agents and scouts center and the publisher rights center will move from Hall 4.2 to Hall 1.2. Exhibitors in Hall 6.0 will move to the Festhalle; Meet-the-Author events previously scheduled for […]
Book Fairs
Frankfurt Book Fair Adds Space and Programming For Children’s Books
Frankfurt Book Fair announced that they will be expanding the children’s and YA portions of the event by adding space and programming. Hall Four will now become the hub for children’s publishing, with children’s and YA publishers from all of the DACH (German-speaking) regions exhibiting there. This year, the Fair will also add the Imagination Stage, which will host the Kids Conference, a panel discussion by Manchester Metropolitan University on diversity in children’s and young adult literature, and talks on “cross-media storytelling and funding opportunities for publishers.” The weekend after the festival the stage will become part of the Frankfurt […]
US Book Show Sessions on AI, Growth
At the US Book Show ceo panel, Publishers Weekly editorial director Jonathan Segura asked executives how they are wrestling with the problem of detecting AI-generated content in manuscripts. HBG ceo Shelley didn’t reference the cancelled SHY GIRL or have a specific answer, saying that the company doesn’t have a systemic way of checking for AI authorship. He said that AI-detection programs are largely imperfect and that authors have concerns about having their work fed into such tool. He also doesn’t want to encourage a “culture of suspicion or disbelief of authors,” but said that the company has a contractual policy […]
BookCon Responds to Wild Lines, ARC Giveaways
After 25,000 people descended on the Javits Center for Book Con last weekend, parent company Reed Pop has responded to criticism over the event’s organization, USA Today reports. Social media posts detailed intense crowds and frenzied ARC drops, which some attendees called unsafe. “We heard the feedback clearly on the reservation system, ARC drops, and crowd flow. Some of it was demand outpacing our projections; some of it was decisions we’ll make differently next year. A community that shows up with this much passion is one we can grow alongside, and we’re grateful for it,” Reed Pop vice president of […]
London Book Fair: Germany Leads Changes to the English-Language Rights Market
The changing market for English-language rights in Europe continues to be a book fair topic of conversation. In his talk on Tuesday morning, PRH UK ceo Tom Weldon spoke about Piper, an imprint of Bonnier Germany, acquiring the exclusive English-language European rights to Bonnie Garmus’s new novel PECK & PECK (Scribner is publishing it in the US). Garmus’s first book, the international bestseller Lessons in Chemistry, was published by PRH, as well as Piper. Weldon said that letting Garmus’s book go was a decision based on the rights structure: “The reason was a very important principle for us, which is […]
London Book Fair: Audio, AI, and Declining Attention Spans
On day two of London Book Fair, chatter on the convention floor kept returning to how to revive nonfiction. Meanwhile, the programming continued to address audio, AI, and declining attention spans. Niamh Parsley, head of product & design for audiobooks at Spotify spoke about Page Match, noted that the company has tracked about a 50/50 split between people who come looking for a specific audiobook and people who happen upon a book they want to listen to. “We’re not relying on authors to bring their audiences to Spotify,” she said. Additionally, the app uses data from customers’ listening to help […]