The Bookseller.com

17th May 2008

Benedicte Page is a news reporter on The Bookseller. She was formerly the magazine's book news editor.

Chilled Bologna

01.04.08

Sunshine, ice cream stalls and great coffee - no-one could claim that the Bologna Children's Book Fair is a tough gig. Noticeably more chilled than Frankfurt or London, Bologna is all about doing business in a friendly and relaxed environment, and the clusters of book trade folk chatting on the lawns between the exhibition halls look more like groups of friends meeting in the park on a Sunday afternoon.

But for all the air of calm, publishers say the fair is busy this year, with full appointment books and deals being done. "Relaxed but productive" is how Kate Beal at Faber describes it. She was busily talking to international publishers about a new edition of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, coming from Faber in the autumn.

"There's a sense of real enthusiasm and freshness across all territories", Anne McNeil, publishing director at Hodder Childrens Books, told me. The Hachette Children's Books team were delighted by Dreamworks optioning Orchard's Rumblewick property at the fair.

A surge of interest in UK picture books has followed the Big Picture's announcement yesterday of Ten Best New Illustrators. Random House - which has three of the winners, Joel Stewart, Alexis Deacon and Mini Grey - says that the UK initiative has really had an effect and that European publishers are now demanding to see all of the illustrators' work.

But some are lamenting a lack of originality in the fair's offerings, as publishers concentrate on building existing brands instead of breaking new names, or stick to tried and tested themes - pirates, fairies, dragons, dinosaurs.

Is horror the new fantasy? The consensus is that something has to be, since fantasy is past it, and that horror is thematically a natural enough progression.

There's also been a little trouble in paradise this year. Agents at the fair are unhappy with the relocation of their centre to an upper floor, leaving them feeling exposed in a "goldfish bowl" environment and - worse - minus easy access to their own loos and at the mercy of long queues in the main halls. With US agent Barry Goldblatt particularly unhappy with the new arrangements, a petition has been organised to demand a return to the old location for next year's fair.
 
But at Bologna, the real business is not done just during appointments at the stands, but also over an excellent dinner and a few glasses of prosecco with book trade colleagues in the evenings, often during a get-together of international publishers for an author. (Axel Scheffler, Chris Mould and Liz Kessler are among the authors at the fair this year).

Faber's Beal told me: "Conversations in the evenings are so much easier, because everyone is so relaxed."

And at a merry gathering for Gemma Malley's publishers last night, Bloomsbury's Sarah Odedina explained: "Bologna is all about relationships. Often I only buy one book at the fair itself, but later someone I've talked to at the fair will ring me up and say, 'I've got this great book....' So how many books do I buy as a result of the relationships formed at Bologna? Dozens."