Ironies abound if you know where to look here in Frankfurt, where the annual Book Fair is unfolding in its usual fashion. There is the host city itself, the the banking center of Germany, which has sprouted dozens of modern skyscrapers in the past decade as the Euro zone has boomed, feeling less brash and more uncertain than ever as the world waits to see if Germany will take some of the past decade’s earnings and plow it back into supporting the economic union that made it possible. Then there is this year’s guest of honor, Iceland. They signed on […]
Book Fairs
Covering the Coverage of Publishers Launch Frankfurt
The Bookseller’s FutureBook has multiple reports from Monday’s day-long Publishers Launch Conference. This one is more of a summary while this piece focuses on the morning’s survey of ebook adoption in multiple markets globally, and the accompanying panel discussion including executives from Italy, Germany, Brazil and China. Their third focuses on the panel with agents David Miller at Rogers, Coleridge and White; Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media; Peter Fritz at Paul & Peter Fritz and Monica Martin at MB Agency. Miller reported seeing some “slippage” negotiating digital royalties above 25 percent (including escalators): “I’ve negotiated some better rates, and publishers are […]
PLC: Bowker to Add US eBook Sales Monitoring, and International Consumer Data
At this morning’s Publishers Launch Frankfurt conference, Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher announced two important data initiatives. In the US, Bowker is rolling out PubTrack Digital, a service to track actual ebook unit sales for (and from) participating publishers. Bowker’s way of getting around the unwillingness so far from retailers to share data in a common system is to work with publisher’ own invoices for their ebook sales. They take each publisher’s own data and integrate it into their aggregated data pool. Since they are working from publishers’ billing accounts, that means the data lags the marketplace by roughly five weeks–but it […]
At PLC Frankfurt, Mondadori to Launch Translated eBooks In US, and More World Views
Some information and highlights from this morning’s Publishers Launch Conference, eBooks Go Global, in Frankfurt. One of the premises of today’s conference was an expectation the ebooks will lead to new ways of publishing more fluidly around the world. Riccardo Cavallero confirmed this in the morning’s opening panel of international trade executives in two announcements. “We’re going to launch our authors in English directly into English-speaking markets” in ebook form. “We will keep paper rights free,” so if their translations find a market, “we will able to convince some reluctant North American publishers” to take over the English rights. Cavellero […]
Two Actions Might Disrupt Frankfurt Travel
Those attending the Frankfurt Book Fair this week are faced with the possibility of two different work slowdowns that could catch you coming or going. Flights into Frankfurt are experiencing delays Monday afternoon as over 1,200 ground handling staff attend meetings discussing EU plans to increase competition among the handlers. Lufthansa said Sunday “we are actively preparing for it and hope to limit the effect on passengers as much as possible,” while warning that at least some delays are likely. The larger concern is when you’ll be able to go home. Germany’s air traffic controllers rejected a mediator’s proposal to […]
Deal Volume Grows Ahead of Frankfurt
With the Frankfurt Book Fair looming, we have compiled our semi-annual look at the state of dealmaking, this time bolstered by some very pretty charts. Visualizing our data should make it easier for readers to draw their own conclusions from the statistics, and it allows us to reveal more nuance to the figures as well. The first chart below looks at all US Publishers Marketplace deal reports from September. Deal volume among “comparable categories” continues to grow, up 7.5 percent over last year (when reports jumped almost 17 percent from the recession trough of 2009). But total deal volume is […]