News
Frankfurt 'on-course', but exhibitors drop
14.10.08 | Philip Jones
The Frankfurt Book Fair has opened, with the organisers of the fair confident despite a drop in exhibitor numbers, from 7,448 in 2007 to 7,373 in 2008. The number of different countries participating has also fallen, from 108 in 2007, to 100 this year.
Juergen Boos, director, said the 60th fair was "well on course for success". At the opening press conference Boos said: "In total, we have rented out 1.4% more space. Particularly satisfying is the higher-than-average 2% growth among the Anglo-Saxon exhibitors—this was not something we could take for granted, but was the result of much hard work."
With 3,337 stands, German exhibitors form the largest group. They are followed by the British with 834 and the USA with 662. Nevertheless the fall-off in German exhibitors will worry some.
According to the German trade paper Buchreport, the German book market is not expected to be as strong as in 2007—high street bookshops have experienced a decline in sales by 3% during the first nine months, with non-fiction and textbooks performing particularly badly.
The survey of 90 executives of German publishing houses on the eve of the fair found that a quarter expected sales to get worse. But Gottfried Honnefelder, director of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association, was bullish. "The book market is thriving. The year 2007, with a gain of 3.4%, was such an exceptional year that publishers and bookstores will be happy with simply maintaining this level."
