The Frankfurt Pavilion, seen here in 2019, returns to the Frankfurter Buchmesse Agora this year, October 19 to 23. Image: FBM, Anett Weirauch
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
Frankfurt 2022: Translation, Live Audiences, Inclusivity
Mohsin Hamid To Give a Keynote Address at Frankfurt
Frankfurt Fellows 2022: Rahul Soni of HarperCollins India
Frankfurter Buchmesse: Trade Visitor Tickets Now on Sale, 2022 Hall Plan Issued
Boos: ‘A Dominant Position in the Business’
With what organizers report is a total of 4,000 exhibitors from at least 80 countries registered so far, Frankfurter Buchmesse is expecting its 74th iteration to be world publishing’s “benchmark event” of the year, with a strong international turnout among book publishing professionals, literary agents, scouts, vendors, and members of the press.
“As the book industry’s leading trade fair,” Frankfurt’s president and CEO Juergen Boos says, “Frankfurter Buchmesse has a dominant position in the business. Yet it’s much more than just a place for doing business: the fair stands for diversity, for plurality, and against any kind of discrimination.
“These basic values are visible in this year’s program of events: many of our guests are writers whose books seek answers to current political and social issues.”
As Publishing Perspectives reported Tuesday, the Pakistani British writer Mohsin Hamid is one of the guests Boos refers to, with the German edition of his The Last White Man out this week from DuMont Buchverlag (Der letzte weiße Mann) in a translation by Nicolai von Schweder-Schreiner.
Juergen Boos
Hamid, who will deliver a keynote address at Buchmesse’s opening press conference, Boos says, “creates a scenario” in The Last White Man “in which the community of an unnamed town is surreally confronted with its fears and prejudices.
“And numerous authors will present their new books at the Frankfurt Pavilion,” Boos says, “the fair’s stage for cultural and political content curated by the book fair, including Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah; climate activist Luisa Neubauer; Spanish essayist Irene Vallejo; and Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan, this year’s winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.” (Our interview with Gurnah from Sharjah International Book Fair is here.)
“The full program of the Frankfurt Pavilion will be announced shortly. “And as we plan the book fair,” Boos says, “we are taking into account that the COVID-19 situation might change this autumn. We’re in contact with the relevant authorities and will meet all hygiene and safety requirements that apply in October.”
Major World Publishers, Sold-Out LitAg, and Ukraine
The 2022 Frankfurter Buchmesse hall plan. Image: FBM
In terms of the response of literary agents, there’s a waiting list now, as the available 456 tables have all sold in the Literary Agents & Scouts Center (LitAg) are fully booked. This year, the center will be located in Hall 4.2. As we published last week, here is the hall plan we’re picturing above.
Among those 4,000 exhibitors, all the major publishing groups have registered to attend Frankfurter Buchmesse in October, including the primary multinational publishing groups based in the United States and United Kingdom–Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Scholastic, Ingram Content Group, Taylor & Francis, Springer Nature, and Elsevier. Spotify and TikTok are also on the list of exhibitors, as are some 70 collective country stands.
Asian book markets are anticipated to be represented again in Frankfurt, including China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand. The major European book markets—including France, Italy, Norway, Poland—will also be represented with large collective stands. From Africa, exhibitors are coming from markets including Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Egypt.
In Lviv, June 18. Image – Getty iStockphoto: Ivan Kyryk
Those collective stands include a 100-meter stand for Ukrainian book publishers and institutions in Hall 4.0. This special “Focus on Ukraine” setting, designed to study the state of the beleaguered country’s publishing industry, is made possible with the cooperation Frankfurt has from the Goethe-Institut Ukraine and the Ukrainian Book Institute.
What’s more, the fair is organizing a workshop for publishers from Central and Eastern Europe with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office. That program is to focus on Ukraine and is expected to have the participation of representatives from Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
On “Frankfurt Saturday” (October 22), authors will be part of a Ukraine-focused program in the Agora’s Frankfurt Pavilion, a presentation from the German Federal Agency for Civic Education in cooperation with the trade show.
Among exhibitors from Germany are the Munich-based Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, Holtzbrinck and Bonnier, and the Ganske Group, along with Aufbau, CH Beck, Diogenes, DuMont, Klett-Cotta, Hanser, and Suhrkamp, as well as the Kurt Wolff Stiftung’s publishing divisions. All exhibitors are being listed in the exhibitor directory here.
Guest of Honor Spain: ‘Creatividad Desbordante’
A view from an artist’s conceptualization of the planned pavilion for Frankfurter Buchmesse’s Guest of Honor Spain. Image: SpainFrankfurt 2022
Publishing Perspectives readers are very familiar now with the plans and scale of the Guest of Honor Spain program, with its slogan Creatividad Desbordante—a program that will be based at Messe Frankfurt’s Forum on Level 1 some three decades after Spain’s last turn in the designated-country spot.
With its emphasis on multiculturalism and the Spanish language “as a bridge to Latin America,” the pavilion’s design (by Madrid’s Enorme Studios) and busy programming plan will feature more than 200 organizations and people during Frankfurt week.
We’re told that titles can still be submitted for the international exhibition Books on… Spain, which is organized by Frankfurter Buchmesse and traditionally shown at the guest of honor pavilion.
The current list of new publications in German, which Frankfurter Buchmesse compiles for each of its guest of honor countries, includes 186 titles by authors from Spain or publications about Spain. The new titles are being released by more than 90 German-language publishers.
Publishing Perspectives Forum and a Kids Conference
A newly devised venue, the Publishing Perspectives Forum will offer two days of programming on October 19 and 20, curated by Publishing Perspectives in cooperation with Frankfurter Buchmesse.
Featuring international industry leaders and opinion makers, the program will convene leading voices from the world publishing industry to discuss new challenges and analyze trends. Admission to the events in the forum are free to all trade visitors and exhibitors.
Speakers will range from top executives at multinational companies to influential entrepreneurs and small-business owners actively involved in shaping the future of publishing. The program’s hours are expected to run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both Frankfurt Wednesday and Thursday, and you’ll find the Publishing Perspectives Forum in Messe Frankfurt’s Congress Center, the Spektrum Room.
Programming highlights also include a Frankfurt Kids Conference running 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. on October 19 in the Conference Center’s Illusion Room. In this program, specialists will talk children’s books in a socio-political content and from an international viewpoint. Tickets for that the children’s publishing program are here, at €250.00 (US$254.18).
The fair’s MasterClass series returns this year, for companies looking to present and promote their businesses prior to the opening of the trade show. Running from October 10 to 14, this digital series will again require audience members to apply for access.
And another digital event planned for the fair is the online networking session called “The Hof” at 5 p.m. CEST on September 8 and 29, and on October 19.
Update: This story has a follow-up look at more programming and authors coming to Frankfurt 2022, along with funding that’s supporting exhibitors and measures being taken in anti-discrimination and the fair’s code of conduct, plans for Frankfurt Studio, BookFest, and more.
Meanwhile, find ticketing information for Frankfurter Buchmesse here, with a story on it here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on Frankfurter Buchmesse is here, more from us on guest of honor programs is here, more on Spain and its plans for Frankfurt is here, more on the German book and publishing market is here, and more on book fairs and trade shows in the world publishing industry is here.
Follow our coverage of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and its impact on the country’s publishing players and international industry reactions. 
More on the Ukrainian Book Institute is here.
More from us on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here