One modest book lifted to international acclaim with help from exposure at the Frankfurt Book Fair is Sam Savage’s FIRMIN: Adventures of an American Lowlife, originally bought out of the slush pile by Coffee House Press. The book’s path to success in translation–with a reported 300,000 copies sold in Italy and 100,000 copies sold in Spain–was presented in a case study called The Ins and Outs of International Rights and Licenses at FBF. In this case the trigger was sub-agent Sandra Bruna bringing the book to Elena Ramirez RicoRico of Planeta’s Seix Barral. The publisher made a strong offer to […]
Book Fairs
Speeches Open Frankfurt Book Fair
At this morning’s opening press conference, Frankfurt Book Fair director Juergen Boos said, “The book sector follows its own rules, even in the face of the international financial crisis. This has been demonstrated by a survey of the heads of German publishing houses, which the Book Fair recently carried out in cooperation with the magazine buchreport. Although there were almost as many pessimists as optimists among the respondents, the majority opinion was that the business situation for publishers would remain consistent.” The biggest growth at this year’s show comes, not surprisingly, in the Digital Market Place in Hall 4.2, which […]
Company News: Lulu Layoffs; Harper Studio UK; and More
Lulu.com is laying off 24 employees, almost a quarter of their workforce of 100. The reductions include recently-hired president Bryce Boothby Jr. and European vp Cristel Lee Leed. The company plans to relocate its headquarters from Morrisville, NC to Raleigh within the next few months. CEO Bob Young tells NewMediaAge “with the credit and capital markets frozen solid Lulu couldn’t continue burning through money at its previous pace. We’re very disappointed…. we were forced into a position of having to cut costs.” Bob Miller’s Harper Studio has made an agreement with Harper UK to provide for direct publication in the […]
National Book Festival
A wet weekend did not deter attendance at Washington, DC’s National Book Festival on Saturday. The AP says the event has grown from about 30,000 people in 2001 to approximately 120,000 attendees this year. Created by First Lady Laura Bush, the Librarian of Congress’s James Billington is “hopeful it will continue under a new administration. The library, Billington said last week, ‘will be looking to all possible ways’ to perpetuate this ‘unique and popular’ event.” This Washington Post piece focuses on presentations from authors, including Neil Gaiman, Geraldine Brooks, Dionne Warwick, James McBride, and others.Post
International News: Chinese Book Fair, and Random's South African Expansion
Consultant Rudiger Wischenbart is blogging from the Beijing Book Fair–this year actually being held 70 miles away in Tianjin. Among the currents in Chinese publishing, he sees a maturing and ambitious industry that wants to “localize” licensed international content to be more appropriate for the Chinese audience. He says the Chinese also hope to license and export more of their books to the rest of the world. Booklab A report from Technology Media & Technology China says that vice minister of the General Administration of Press and Publication Yan Xiaohong indicated at a convention forum “that the government would adopt […]