If you love books and count reading as one of your favorite pastimes, then you must have surely heard of one of the most famous literary events in the world, that is held in the German City of Frankfurt in the month of October every year and which is simply called ‘The Frankfurt Book Fair’ or Frankfurter Buchmesse in German. The city of Frankfurt hosts a number of trade fairs all through out the year which are organized by the Messe Frankfurt Corporation and the world’s largest book fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair, is one of its most important fairs in its annual trade show calendar. This year the Frankfurt Book Fair will be held from Wednesday the 15th of October to Sunday the 19th of October.
The Frankfurt book fair is an extremely important event for the entire publishing industry, both the print and online industry and the fair is attended by representatives from book publishing and multimedia companies from all over the world. At this event books are launched, international sale of rights and licenses are negotiated and new trends in the field of media and publishing are unveiled and discussed. In addition to books, comics, DVDs, CDs, audio books, calendars are also showcased at this fascinating event which also features many readings, forums, seminars and workshops. In fact this year’s fair is said to have more than 2700 events on its busy schedule. The Book fair will feature more than 7000 exhibitors from more than 100 countries and is anticipated to attract more than 280,000 visitors.
However it is not only publishing industry executives who attend the show, the last two days of the show are always reserved for the general public who also enjoy visiting the show in order to get an insight to the world of publishing and to meet and interact with world renowned authors. This year Brazilian author Paul Coelho, German author and noble prize winner Günter Grass, Turkish author and noble prize winner Orhan Pamuk, Senegalese witer Fatou Diome, American crime thriller writer Karin Slaughter and the Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf are all expected to attend this exciting event. Further, the fair also attracts personalities from the world of cinema and politics and this year’s event will also be graced by luminaries like Mikhail Gorbachev and Gilberto Gil in addition to the Presidents of Turkey and Germany Abdullah Gül and Horst Köhler respectively.
The History of the Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year though the actual origins of the Frankfurt Book Fair date back to the 15th century when German inventor, Johannes Gutenberg first invented the printed press and eliminated the problem of handwriting books. The city of Frankfurt then began to host book fairs until the 17th century when due to political and cultural upheaval, the book fair business shifted to Leipzig.
After the Second World War, however once again the book fair business returned to Frankfurt when in 1949, about 205 German exhibitors gathered together at Frankfurt’s St Paul’s Church from the 18th of September to the 23rd of September and organized the first post-war book fair. Today this fascinating cultural event attracts a whole host of people from publishers, agents, authors, booksellers, librarians, and academics to illustrators, service providers, film producers, translators, printers, artists, antiquarians, and software and multimedia suppliers and students.
The Frankfurt Book Fair which is a subsidiary of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association is now the biggest book fair in the world as it showcases more than 400,000 titles from all over the world. It is also the co-founder of the Cape Town book Fair in South Africa. The Frankfurt Book Fair also maintains a much trafficked website for the global publishing industry and this year, a special section of the website has been devoted to cataloguing the important events over the fair’sixty year history.
Guests of Honor at the Fair
There is a special attraction each year at the Book Fair which takes the form of the Guest of Honor at the Fair. The Guest of Honor is chosen to showcase the culture and literature of a particular country at the Book Fair through readings, seminars, book exhibitions, dance, theater and film. In 2007, the Book Fair displayed the various aspects of Catalan Culture and in 2008, the chosen Guest of Honor is the captivating and enchanting country of Turkey. Future Guests of Honor will feature the literary and cultural heritage of countries like China in 2009 and Argentina in 2010.
Digitization of the world of books and media
As the world of media is constantly being revolutionized with new forms and formats of knowledge like blogs, wikis, widgets, social networking etc , the Frankfurt Book Fair has also adapted itself to this new constantly changing and evolving world and now features many forums, seminars and exhibits in its program which deal with the digitization of books and media.
For more information about tickets, timings and directions about the Frankfurt Book Fair do visit the official website of the book fair. If you are deciding to visit the fair and are looking for accommodation for the event do try centrally located hotels like Savoy Hotel Frankfurt, Fair Hotel Frankfurt and ABA Hotel FrankFurt which have great offers and also provide easy access to the event.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:00 am
Nayar,
I have been following the Frankfurt Book Fair for about 5 years now. I have never been able to attend, but hope to some day. I read reviews from different blogs and online news. I will be checking back for updates, keep me posted!
October 15th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Book fairs are just awesome. It’s great to see people not only care about reading, but loving it too.
I read an article recently about 100,000 California kids “reading for the cause”. With all the video games, movies and TV these days, reading seems to be falling out of people’s care. I love reading and I love seeing other people so thrilled about reading too.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
That’s so true Alex, I love reading as well and can’t go to bed unless I have read a few lines.
October 28th, 2008 at 1:53 am
I was recently in Germany for the beer festival… wonderful time. And I am always browsing for body building books
October 30th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Reading is my favorite pastime, but today people spend more time in front of computer and TV. So I think, that The Frankfurt Book Fair is a good chance for us to buy new interesting books, and meet famous people.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I can’t agree with you more