Searching for Google Talk, and Global Deals, at Frankfurt Day 2

by Steven Zeitchik, with reporting by Louisa Ermelino, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 10/20/2005

The weird international pipeline that is the Frankfurt Book Fair--deals and stories moving between countries faster than you can say unglaublich-- started flowing in earnest on the fair's second day.

The biggest news both at Hall 8 and in other spots on the grounds was Google, with chatter at publisher booths filling mostly with support for the newly filed AAP suit against the Silicon Valley firm. Meanwhile, in one of the German halls, an extended session saw Google German staffer Jens Redmer touting U.S. library material full-throttle to publishers and consumers. Despite some audience questions about copyright, mentions of a lawsuit were nary to be found.

Redmer also acknowledged Google negotiations with a number of German libraries, but since the company has opted not to go private-domain in Europe, the conversation here is likely to be more muted.

The fair management itself also continued its outward thrust, formally announcing late yesterday a book fair in Capetown, S.A., in conjunction with the publisher's association of South Africa and scheduled for June. Organizers said the move was in part a response to the diminution of the Zimbabwe book fair; it'll be more a readers' fair than a rights show.

Organizers also reported a first-day attendance bump in Frankfurt of 1.1%, to 44,074, and given the proportionally higher numbers of European to Anglos, the (small) increase might be attributable to the presence at German booths of well-known American authors, including Stephen Hawking and Malcolm Gladwell (the sight of whose trademark tonsorial flair at a Berliner Verlag party the other night was surreal indeed).

Many of the bigger deals from the rights-center floor still haven't wrapped, but the floor was jumping and many pacts were imminent. Frankfurt fixture Ed Victor is shopping Bareback, a metaphoric spooker with a werewolf leitmotif that just went to Random's Dan Menaker, to a number of foreign territories. (Of course Victor also sold world-rights to Eric Clapton's memoir just before the fair, and reports had interest in the Doubleday title high in European countries.)

Elsewhere, the Daniel Greenberg-repped call-to-action Leaving Microsoft to Save the World, already sold to Harper, was starting to get international traction, while yesterday also saw the French sale of Vikram Chandra's balyhooed novel (the Indian Godfather, as the pitch goes), which prompted a glowing and fist-pumping publisher.

Continuing the globe-hop, Canadian indie House of Anansi has about nine American houses taking a good look at Alligator, the Giller nominee by Canadian Lisa Moore; if it goes through it will be a rare Canada-to-U.S. deal. And at Philip Gwyn Jones' Portobello Books, A Soldier's War in Chechnya, a gritty and Moscow-ambivalent military memoir, was drawing strong stateside interest despite only a small portion of it already translated--that is, a British publisher was attracting the notice of American houses in a previously unknown Russian writer. The pipeline, it keeps moving.