The Frankfurt Book Fair often serves a platform for delivering platitudes and provocations. Last year in Frankfurt, Yuval Noah Harari, author of Nexus, gave a stern warning about the perils of AI, telling fairgoers that if they lose control of the algorithm, the algorithm will control them. Now, one of the most talked about books of the year is If Anyone Builds It, Everybody Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, a title that refers to the world-ending power of artificial general intelligence.

Is it any surprise then that, just prior to the fair, the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to Hungary's László Krasznahorkai, for "his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art"?

Krasznahorkai was scheduled to appear at the fair's opening press conference, but cancelled due to health reasons, leaving everyone wondering what he might have shared about his own vision of a world facing this new AI peril. Instead, the slot was given to 28-year-old author Nora Haddada. Introduced as the new face of German publishing, she is a former literary agent at the Petra Eggers Agency, and the author of two novels, including Blue Romance, published by S. Fischer last month.

During her speech, Haddada said that we are now living in a world in peril, and fast-forwarded through a litany of catastrophes, from Covid to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Hamas' attack on Israel, Israel's retaliatory war on Gaza, the rise of right-wing populism in Germany and around the world.

Haddada went on to offer a rousing defense of literature as a form of sanctuary from this chaos and portraying her fellow authors as literature's steadfast protectors, while at the same time gently calling them out for not taking more risks and being too fearful to exercise their own freedom of expression. "Silence is just one step down from cowardice," Haddada said.

Perminder Mann makes her mark
Perminder Mann, CEO of Simon & Schuster UK and International, took to the stage Wednesday morning alongside Porter Anderson of Publishing Perspectives. In May, Mann took over from Ian Chapman at S&S UK after 15 years at Bonnier Books UK, eight of those as CEO. Though she wasn't looking for a new role, the opportunity was too good to resist. "It was a balance between logic and instinct," she said, "and instinct won."

She is credited with building Bonnier from the ground up, creating a company culture that people would want to be part of so she could build the best possible team; getting that right, she said, meant the rest would follow. At S&S, Mann felt things were “a little bit too quiet,” and her goal is to celebrate the publisher’s strengths—the iconic backlist, the reputation for meeting readers where they are—and the people working there.

To this end, Mann is spearheading an office move, taking place in spring 2026. The new offices will support flexible working—Mann is an advocate due to her own experiences as a working mother. The S&S team will come into the office two days a week, balancing their work accordingly: one-to-one meetings will take place at home via Zoom, as will focused work. The office is for creativity, engagement, collaboration, and group meetings.

She grew up as an avid library user in a household that couldn't afford books, and it's important to her to "look outside the walls in which you operate." As president of the Publishers Association in the U.K., she helped to kickstart the National Year of Reading, and she wants to champion people having access to books. "Books can change lives and keep people together. This job doesn't feel like work at all."

Where are the readers?
One of the biggest challenges facing European publishers is how to seduce readers away from screens in an age of infinite digital distraction. The stark reality: nearly half of Europeans don't read books, and the industry is wrestling with whether declining reading habits represent a genuine crisis or a measurement problem.

Speaking on Wednesday morning, a pair of experts presented sobering data while questioning its reliability. A 2022 Eurostat survey found 47.2% of Europeans aged 16 and over had not read a single book in the previous 12 months—a figure that has raised alarm across the publishing industry.

Enrico Turrin, deputy director of the Federation of European Publishers, expressed skepticism about the methodology. "We have some doubts about the data," Turrin said, noting results from his native Italy seemed implausibly low. More fundamentally, the survey excluded all readers under age 16—omitting children who still read extensively.

The demographic patterns Turrin revealed, however, paint a stark picture. Reading rates declined sharply with age: 52.9% of those 65 and older reported no book reading, compared to just 39.8% of 16-29 year-olds. Education proved the strongest predictor of reading behavior—68% of those with low education levels didn't read, versus only 23% of university graduates.
Gender differences were equally pronounced. Just 39.5% of women reported no reading, compared to 55.5% of men. "Men should learn from women," Turrin quipped.

Perhaps most telling: when asked why they didn't read, only 1.8% cited cost as the barrier. The overwhelming majority—51.3%—simply had no interest, while 21% blamed lack of time.

Lucy Kenyon from NielsenIQ offered a more nuanced view of the price question. She noted that in several territories where a book costs more than the average hourly wage, volume growth is actually increasing. "These are nations of really keen book buyers where books are a luxury item, yet you still pay out for," Kenyon said, suggesting that price resistance may be overstated among committed readers

"We don't need to make books cheaper," Turrin concluded. "We need to make books sexier.

Kenyon pointed to encouraging signs: positive volume growth in more territories, global trends like romantasy and self-improvement continuing strong, and vibrant pockets of regional content—locally produced food and drink books, local fiction authors—resonating with their markets. "It's worth saying that books are still quite expensive for a lot of people," she acknowledged. "But we are still seeing a lot of these countries buying books in more numbers, so it was a bit more positive."

IP discovery happens everywhere
One thing that’s clear at this year's fair is the fact that stories remain central to the book trade and creative industries.
In his first-ever appearance at the Fair on Tuesday, Toronto International Film Festival executive Keith Bennie addressed the Rights Directors' Meeting reception, where he delivered a message that might unsettle traditional publishers: the next blockbuster adaptation could come from a social media post just as easily as from a book manuscript.

Bennie cited several examples that illustrate the shift. The film Zola originated as a 148-tweet thread by A'Ziah "Zola" King documenting a chaotic road trip. Another film, The Farewell, began as a segment on the podcast This American Life. Slenderman emerged from anonymous "creepypasta" horror stories shared in online forums. Literary agents are now scouring Reddit for compelling voices, Bennie noted, pointing to another project, My Wife and I Bought a Ranch, which originated as a series of threads posted on Reddit that became the novel Old Country and was sold to Netflix in a seven-figure deal.

But he was quick to reassure the book fair audience that literature still drives the festival's biggest successes. Nine of the festival's last 14 People's Choice Award winners have been literary adaptations, including this year's winner, Hamnet, based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell. "Literary adaptations are still the cornerstone of adaptation at our festival," Bennie said.