Frankfurt Quiet, But Not Dead
By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 10/15/2008 8:48:00 AM
Necessities, and not luxuries, is how Frankfurt Book Fair director Jurgen Boos characterized books at the opening press conference on Tuesday. Whether books are, in fact, "resistant to economic cycles of boom and bust," as Boos put it, is certainly the question percolating in Germany. Is this a slow Frankfurt? (According to stats from the Fair, exhibitor attendance is down slightly, from 7,448 total exhibitors in 2007 to 7,373 this year, while agency attendance is up modestly from 471 last year to 510 this year.) Is the so-called economic crisis already having a ripple effect on sales and acquisitions? A number of agents said the Fair, while quiet, is still yielding plenty of business.
The offers, according to Sarah Nundy of Andrew Nurnberg, are still coming in, if "more cautiously." Robert Gottlieb, of Trident Media, said he thinks publishers are particularly interested in new material, in manuscripts that started circulating at (or just before) the Fair. Nonetheless, Gottlieb agreed with Nundy, saying that people are buying "but they're being careful."
Neil Olson, of Donadio & Olson, said he's been pleasantly surprised that the tenor isn't worse; he said he expected the Fair to be "dead and full of fear and loathing" given the economic conditions, but that it's been far less glum than he anticipated.
Tracy Fisher, of William Morris, who was high on the fact that Aravind Adiga was just named the winner of the Booker Prize (he's an agency client), said she senses that the rights tent is a bit less crowded this year. Morris added that, even if it's not the thing dictating all the business decisions, the economic crisis is what's on everyone's mind; "people are skittish and being cautious."
For one agent, though, a slower Fair isn't necessarily a bad thing. Ira Silverberg, of Sterling Lord, said he's been "busy" so far after closing a major deal before the Fair—he made a six figure foreign sale for Adam Haslett's untitled debut novel (a follow-up to his award-winning debut short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here). In Silverberg's mind the industry's woes are, in part, tied to over-spending on so-called "big books" from prior Frankfurts so, if people are approaching deals more cautiously and intelligently, all the better.
