Passport control at Frankfurt Airport, the section for citizens of the European Union, ahead of Frankfurter Buchmesse. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Richard Charkin
Editor’s note: Our columnist Richard Charkin is an international advisory board member of Frankfurter Buchmesse. He’s giving us updates on his impressions this week during Frankfurt 2022. — Porter Anderson
By Richard Charkin | @RCharkin
Passport Line: ‘Longer Than the Flight From London’
Arrived yesterday evening at Frankfurt Airport. The above photo shows the almost nonexistent line for European Union citizens to show their passports.
Richard Charkin
And the photo below shows the line for the rest of us, that line now including British citizens.
The glee with which the officials pointed out that Brexit was our choice exuded unalloyed Schadenfreude. My saying that it wasn’t my choice didn’t impress.
Please God—and not just to suffer shorter queues—we can find a solution whereby the United Kingdom can rejoin the community of decent, like-minded democracies of Europe before the English Channel turns into a Pacific Ocean.
The queue took longer than the flight from London, but the tedium was relieved by spending time in line with my friend, Kaveh Bazargan, one of the unsung heroes of scholarly publishing with his brilliant support company, River Valley Technologies. Frankfurt is all about those chance meetings, both enjoyable and practical.
Passport control, the non-European Union line at Frankfurt Airport ahead of the opening of the 2022 Frankfurt Buchmesse. Image: Richard Charkin
First up, a meeting of the international advisory board of the Buchmesse. Regrettably it was a confidential meeting, but I can assure you that the management of the fair is diligent in its efforts to serve the book world in all its crazily complex facets.
A quick trip across town to the new location of the celebrated STM conference at the Hilton led to a meeting with the publishing industry’s foremost defender of the rights of creators, readers, and indeed even publishers, the legal superstar Carlo Scollo Lavizzari.
I quote from a speech he gave as he leaves his role at STM:
Carlo Scollo Lavizzari
“Copyright is the right to publish under one’s own steam, shouldering all the risks entailed. In exercising that right, publishers work hard for every dime they earn during the lengthy process of transforming an author’s original work into a book, regardless of the format in which it eventually becomes available for purchase.
“In simple terms, what I’ve been up to is this: trying to ensure that you are paid for the valuable work you do and that you don’t find yourself in jail, or worse.”
Our publishing world is a better place for having people like Carlo on our side.
He also described the scientific publishing community as a bastion of innovation and creativity, savvy, kind, and human-centered. That describes all of publishing in my view.
More on Frankfurter Buchmesse is here, more on this year’s Guest of Honor Spain is here, more on guest of honor programs and markets is here, and more on international book fairs is here, more on industry statistics is here.
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More from us on the still ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here.