Frankfurt, Komme Ich!

The 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair is in full swing. By Friday (as it starts to wind down), I will be in its midst for the very first time. My excuse for never having gone before is that my company does very little international rights business. Most of our material does not translate well to other economies. So it hasn't been worth the effort to pursue translation deals.

I wouldn't really be going this year, either, if it weren't for my husband, the FBF veteran, who thinks I need to see it. This is his 11th year at the fair. It does seem strange that he has inhabited this world for so long and I know nothing of it first hand.

Frankfurt, however, is just a Teutonic appetizer to the real dish of my trip: Athens and Santorini, baby! I have always wanted to visit Greece, so finally I get my chance.

I have been driven to frenzied distraction trying to make sure everything back home is taken care of in my absence. I'm thankful for my mom and my mother-in-law, who make my biennial Euro-jaunts possible by looking after my kiddo and my home. Just a few last-minute details tonight (like, ahem, not living out my recurring nightmare of leaving my passport at home) and I should be ready to go.

You know the best part? I am not taking my computer! My iPod has a few Community and 30 Rock episodes on it, and I loaded up the Kindle with some Nick Hornby (and I still need to finish Eat, Pray, Love--am almost to the love part!). But I am hoping to break my Facebook dependence cold turkey. It will all still be there when I get back. (Won't it?)

Auf weidersehen und αντίο!

What If They Had a London Book Fair and the Americans Didn't Come?

Earlier this week I was all set to send out another ho-hum blog post about how my husband was once again heading off to the London Book Fair for the 11th year in a row. But as most people know by now, something happened.

The car service picked Jason up at 3:45am yesterday and took him to the airport to catch his Chicago flight, and from there on to London. At 7am, as my daughter and I were getting dressed, the Today show came on with the news of the volcano eruption in Iceland. I gasped. As my brain was processing how absolute the Heathrow ground halt was, the phone rang. Indeed, Jason had been advised to get off the Chicago flight (which was delayed) and go home. He rebooked through Paris for today, thinking things might improve. (Meanwhile, I drove about 100 miles round trip to fetch him, take him home, and then go to work.)

By this morning, of course, the ash situation worsened, and e-mails were flying back and forth among him and his colleagues here and in Upper Saddle River. The group's annual rights summit was scheduled for tomorrow in Dame Marjorie's private dining room overlooking the Thames from The Strand. There was no way they'd make it in time for that. So they decided to cancel it. And they also decided that the travel situation would make it nearly impossible to get there in time for the fair itself on Monday. So they surrendered to Vulcan and cancelled their trips altogether.

Jason has spent the entire day undoing all the work and plans that he's been making for months: cancelling dozens of publisher meetings, hotel rooms, flights, trains, dinners, and more. He's absolutely devastated and feels out of sorts to be here and not there. But many of his publishers responded that they, too, would not be able to make it to the fair. What can all of humankind do when Mother Nature kicks over our intricately constructed societal anthills?

Fair officials are still planning to go ahead with the event. But periodic searches of the #LBF10 hashtag on Twitter indicate that the British will likely end up doing a lot of talking to one another because even their European counterparts can't get across the Channel in time. Still, it will be a great economic loss to everyone. Such a shame.

Everyone's Heading to Frankfurt

The annual Frankfurt Book Fair begins Wednesday and the publishing world is en route as we speak. Por ejemplo: Wiley's Julia Lampam said on Twitter that there was hardly anyone on her flight from London that wasn't in publishing. Pearson people are Facebooking their flight departures.

My husband has been in Cyprus visiting customers (and enjoying it way too much), but is now awaiting his own flight to Germany. He promises to send a guest post tomorrow: Tips for first-time visitors to the fair. He's promised us guest posts before, hasn't he? But this is his 10th year at the fair and it sounds like he really is writing something to commemorate it.

Meanwhile, you can follow updates from various attendees on Twitter by searching for the #fbf09 hashtag.

Thessaloniki Book Fair

While the American book industry prepares to launch BookExpo tonight, the book fair in Thessaloniki, Greece, is in full swing, and my husband is right in the middle of it. For many years he has said that BookExpo is not nearly as important to his business as the big fairs in Europe (London, Frankfurt, Warsaw, etc.), and he does not always go to it, anyway. But this year he's far, far from the Javits Center and immersed in meetings with his Greek publishing partners.

I'm not sure how he snuck this trip under my radar, because I swore he wouldn't go back to Greece without me. But here I sit in Indiana, having to be content with a Greek salad at Panera.

I Am Not Going to London--or New York, Either

Jason left for the London Book Fair this morning. Twice in the last three years, I went along with him, even though our part of the company does virtually no foreign-rights business. (I've always been hopeful we could change that, but we haven't.) I mainly went as a tourist and made a one-day appearance at the fair.

But this year I am not going. Last year I started to get the feeling that I have been going to London too often (not that one could ever tire of London--just ask Samuel Johnson). I just think it would be more special if I spaced out my visits more.

Meanwhile, my in-laws are going with him--their first trip overseas and a dream come true for them both. I can't wait to hear how they like it.

I have also decided not to go to Book Expo this year. Last year we took a big contingent and sank a lot of money into it. And I don't think we got a thing in return. So I decided to save us some money and volunteered to stay home. A lot of other publishers are also scaling back, and some are not going at all. There is talk that this show is dying out. I don't know what it will take to save it, but I do hope someone figures it out. Book Expo is an amazing experience for those who have never been: what could be more wonderful than an entire exposition hall devoted to books and the people who make them?

Meanwhile, I am instead gearing up for the Career Management Alliance conference at the end of this month in San Antonio. Seven of my authors will be presenters, and many more friends and potential authors will be there.

Same Old Stuff, Different Day

Yet another publishing layoff announcement, this time at Macmillan.

An interesting thing to note is CEO John Sargent's admission that the company's presence at Book Expo next year will be greatly reduced. "I think it makes more sense to funnel our marketing dollars elsewhere," he said.

I can pretty much guarantee that the majority of the other publishers out there are saying the same thing. They were already saying it last spring before things really got bad. The only thing that might save it this year is the fact that the show will be in New York, so many people will be able to attend without incurring travel costs (although I admit that it was thoroughly amusing to see all those black-wearing Manhattanites in L.A. this year, framed uneasily by palm trees and squinting at the excess of natural light).

Publishing blogger Fran Toolan has some predictions for publishing in 2009. I agree with him: It's going to be an interesting year.

All in all, not an auspicious way to celebrate Jane Austen's 233rd birthday, but there it is.

Checking in on Frankfurt

The Frankfurt Book Fair, the world's largest gathering of publishing people for the purpose of selling rights, is now in full swing. I haven't heard a peep from my hubby since he got to his hotel a few days ago, but that's typical. He generally loses his voice by the end of the first day and gets caught up in a whirlwind of speed-meetings with foreign publishers and wine-soaked ethnic mashup dinners that last into the wee hours. (What happens when you take the Ukrainians to a Spanish restaurant in Germany? If it's comparable to taking the Greeks to a Lebanese restaurant in London, I have some idea.)

Since we're getting no reports from Jason, feel free to check in on the official fair blogs here.

Me Holding a Kindle

While Bezos was wrapping up his much-jeered Book Expo speech that turned into a canned Kindle promo, I was approaching the Amazon booth on the floor. The day before, I had spent a little time playing with the gadget that hopes to change reading as we know it. But I had forgotten to get a photo.

An Amazon rep asked if he could help me. I told him I just wanted a picture of me holding the Kindle for my blog. "You're not going to run away with it, are you?" he asked, and I sensed he was only half kidding. "You're not going to run away with my camera, are you?" I shot back. Geez. You can see the incredulity is still on my face in the photo.

So, what did I think? Well, I like it. I can read the text okay. I love the portability. It was a little yucky when it scrolled to the next page, but I hear you can get used to that. But even with the new price break, tree-fitty is a bit too spendy for my tight budget. Get it down to $199 and I'll buy one.

More Tales from L.A.

My boss, associate publisher Sue Pines, and I flew out to L.A. Friday morning, dropped off our luggage at the hotel, and headed for the fair. We spent most of that day walking the floor of the two halls, taking note of trends and bumping into celebrities such as the eternally tanned George Hamilton and Baba Wawa herself.

It was hard to ignore the distinct absence of attendees. I've never seen the aisles so free of people. In a way it made it a more pleasant experience because we didn't have to fight crowds and could see so much more in a shorter time span. But then I wondered what the poor attendance meant. Nobody wants to fly all the way to L.A.? Technology is making trade shows obsolete? Nobody can afford the trip? As you can imagine, many bloggers are today pondering the same questions and some are predicting the complete end of the show in the near future.

I'm quite certain that many publishers are asking why they spent as much money as they did to have a presence there when there were more people there trying to sell to them and nobody buying anything. To all of them, I say this: Give it another year. Attendance is always up when it's in New York (although, maybe most of them are still Manhattan editors and very few are librarians and booksellers).

Despite all this, I think it was worth our while to go. We got to spend time with our authors and "wow" them with the magnitude of the show. We connected with our colleagues at other publishers. We got direct feedback on our books from customers and experts. We got to meet our new PR agency and watch them educate our authors about media appearances. We saw famous people (and some not-so-famous penguins) and came back energized and refreshed. I'm willing to keep going if everyone else promises to do the same. Okay?

The PITA Guys Meet Jamie Lee Curtis

I just got home from L.A., and boy, do I have a lot of stories to share! I'll get started on that tomorrow. For now, enjoy this photo of the two coauthors of The PITA Principle, Dulin Clark and Bob Orndorff, who were so excited to encounter Jamie Lee in the green room before their book signing. She was gracious enough to let me take a photo of her with them, even though she was in a hurry. She even shook my hand (she must have thought we were with her publisher!).

Bob and Dulin, by the way, had an amazingly successful book signing. There's a lot of buzz building up about the book, which is so exciting to us all. I'm pushing them to start their own PITA blog, where people can share stories about the PITAs that they work with.

Book Expo Starts Tomorrow

The biggest event in American book publishing and bookselling, Book Expo America, starts tomorrow in Los Angeles. It's a mind-boggling confab of education sessions, celebrity autographing, special events, and a trade-show floor with booths from thousands of publishers and publishing-related companies. If you've never been, you should go at least once in your lifetime, if only just to get an idea of the massive scope of our industry.

Our sales and marketing people are already on their way out there to set up the booth. My boss and I are making like seagulls and swooping in Friday morning and swooping out Sunday morning. We mainly want to be there to support our authors and scope out the competition. Oh, and maybe to get Alec Baldwin's autograph.

Several of our authors will be making appearances in the Autographing Area on Saturday:

• Molly Fletcher, Be Your Own Agent, 11:30 am to 12:30 pm, Table #7
• Susan Britton Whitcomb, The Christian's Career Journey, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm, Table #3
• Robert Orndorff and Dulin Clark, The PITA Principle, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm, Table #13

Interestingly, my husband the book fair maven is not going to be there. Any customers he didn't manage to see in London in April, he'll see in Frankfurt in October. His customers are all based in eastern Europe, and L.A. is just a bit too far to travel for them. But his colleagues' Asian customers will be there in full force.

If you'll be at the fair, drop me in line in the comments and maybe we can plan to meet up.

I'll be posting again tomorrow. But after that, you might not hear from me again until Monday. At seven pounds, my four-year-old dinosaur laptop with the bad wireless card is not worth lugging there.

Star-struck: Celebrity Authors at Book Expo

I'll admit it. I grew up in a small town (and that's probly where they'll bury me...). My opportunities to see famous people in Evansville were limited. So that's why I get particularly excited about the author autographing sessions at Book Expo, which is coming up and the end of the month. Several of my authors will be autographing their books again this year. But I always enjoy sneaking a minute to meet other famous authors there. I've chatted up Henry "Fonzie" Winkler (see left), Scott Adams, and Kate Pierson of the B-52's, to name a few.

So this year's lists of autographing sessions are now available online here. Since we'll be in L.A., there will be a few more TV people than usual. Here are some names that caught my eye:

• Alec Baldwin (Yeah baby! He's on fire now, even after calling his daughter a little pig!)
• Bobby Brown
• Dom Deluise
• Jamie Lee Curtis
• Garrison Keillor
• Vicki Lawrence as Mama Harper (uh, maybe I'll skip this one)
• Stan Lee
• Leonard Nimoy (although his book looks somewhat illogical to me)
• William Shatner
• Ty Pennington
• Dionne Warwick
• Kirk Cameron (preachy as ever)
• Ray Bradbury (he's still alive? I love this guy!)
• Cheech and Chong (one of them promoting a kids' book?)
• Judy Blume (I'm still in trouble for my contraband copy of Forever, but who didn't love Fudge?)
• RFK Jr.
• Brooke Shields
• Kevin Nealon
• Ernest Borgnine

And last but not least:

• Salman Rushdie (has the fatwah expired?)

So it looks like a pretty good crop of celebs--or the makings of a good CelebReality show. Of course, Dr. Ruth will be there as usual, and Henry Winkler and Scott Adams are back again, too. This is the one weekend a year that the book nerds rub shoulders with Hollywood. And I wouldn't miss it!

Impressions of the London Book Fair

My time at the London Book Fair this year was fleeting. I primarily went to meet our new parent company's foreign rights rep and give him some insights on some of my books. But I also walked the whole floor of the place fairly quickly and got a feel for the scope and scale of this fair, one of the main events in the yearly calendar of book fairs.

The big publishers were there as usual with their giant "booths," which are bigger than my first apartment.

Here is a picture of my husband in his place in Pearson's booth. He was booked solid with 30-minute appointments all three days of the fair, from 9am to 6pm. He didn't even schedule time to eat. I was able to join him and some of his customers and coworkers for a couple of dinners in London, which is always an experience.

The London Book Fair didn't seem to be as rife with over-the-top publicity ploys as BookExpo always is (although one Turkish publisher was passing out gift bags full of Turkish delight to anyone and everyone). (I brought some home for our little Narnia fan.)

The only "celebrity" I spotted was Sara Nelson of Publishers Weekly. She was busy talking to someone, so I vowed to come back later and ask her to be interviewed for the blog. But when I returned, she was gone. I think I'll still try to get in touch with her at some point. Meanwhile, you can read her more cogent overview of the fair here.

Had I not been getting sick, I would have dug in more deeply; but under the circumstances, I feel I just skimmed the surface of this year's fair. It was huge, and this photo just barely gives you an idea of that:

Next up is BookExpo in L.A. next month. I'll be more deeply immersed in that fair since several of my authors will be there and we'll be promoting some "big books" (for us).

London/Moscow Plans Are Falling into Place

We're leaving for our great European jaunt a week from today, and I think we are almost ready. The Russian visas and our passports are on their way back to us. Jason's appointments are all set. I have a couple appointments as well, both for work and for fun.

I'll just give you a quick, day-by-day rundown:

• When we arrive on Friday morning, Jason will head to the Pearson offices in The Strand to finalize details for the Foreign Rights Summit he hosts there every year for his department's foreign publishing partners. I'll be hopping a train to Lincolnshire. I have a 2pm appointment to tour Harlaxton Manor, my home-away-from-home 22 years ago when I was in college.
• On Saturday, we've arranged a bus tour to Stonehenge. Jason's never been there before, so we'll be taking an early train to Bath and then hopping a tour van for a day of sightseeing among the ruins of ancient Britain--with time for shopping, of course.
• Sunday I'm planning to head out to Chawton to see Jane Austen's house. Jason thinks it's funny that I have to take a bus from the Alton train station to a place called Alton Butts, and then walk to Chawton. Meanwhile, Jason will be at his summit in The Strand.
• Monday I'll be lunching with Sally, a friend from 22 years ago. She's picking me up at the train station in Peterborough (as she did on my last visit two years ago) and we'll be hanging out with her eldest son, Max, and maybe spending some time in Stamford, where they filmed the last Pride and Prejudice and some of the Da Vinci Code.
• Tuesday I have an appointment to meet EMC's foreign rights rep, Wolf, at the London Book Fair. I'll be telling him about our books and their rights potential. Then I'm going to see the King Tut exhibit.
• Wednesday we leave for Moscow. Jason's Ukraininan publisher friend Gennadiy will meet us there, and his wife Helen (who has been to our house a few times) will accompany me as I crawl around Red Square for a few days while Jason works.

So we're going to be plenty busy. But I can't wait!

The London Book Fair Is Coming Up

The annual London Book Fair, described as "the global publishing community's leading spring forum for booksellers, publishers, librarians and book production services worldwide," will happen on April 14-16. That might sound like a long time from now, but it really isn't, especially for the participants. Jason has been busily booking appointments with customers (foreign publishers) since December.

I visited the fair two years ago during its semi-disastrous move to the ExCel Centre in the far-east Docklands area. It took a long time to get out there via subway and light rail. And then we had to wade through muddy parking lots to get back to the train afterwards. Everyone complained, so this year it's back in central London at Earl's Court.

When I say "visited" above, that's what I meant. I just wanted to see the fair, since Jason goes every year. JIST does virtually no foreign business, so there's not much for me to do there professionally. I spent the rest of the days visiting friends in Stamford, tracking down ancestors in Cambridgeshire, and taking the Magical History Tour of Liverpool while Jason worked. Then I'd come back to London in time for fabulous dinners with his foreign clients (the best was at Levant). What a vacation--it totally rocked!

So I'm thinking of going back this year. Jason's trip includes a few days in Moscow, and I don't want to miss that. We have Russian-speaking friends who will be there to help us, so I think this is the year I should go. I know many readers urged me to go to Frankfurt, instead. But it's London, folks. And Russia. I'm really leaning toward going. Guess I'd better decide soon--I have to apply for my Russian visa!

Decisions, Decisions: Where Should I Go This Year?

As part of his job as Foreign Rights Manager for Pearson, my husband goes to Europe several times a year for book fairs. Most of the time I get left behind (and not without a little resentment). Somebody's gotta stay home with the kid. But I can't complain too much: In the past five years, I've been to Italy, England, and Portugal with him, and always on his frequent-flyer miles.

So he's decided (and I agree) that this year I need to plan to tag along on one of his trips. The problem is deciding which one. A lot depends on what trips I need to go on for my own job (two or three domestic trips to industry conferences) and when we can get a grandmother to help us. (I'm a glutton for punishment, but still haven't gotten up the nerve to take a four-year-old on a transatlantic flight.)

Here are my choices. Which would you choose?

• London and Moscow in early April
• Warsaw and Thessaloniki in May
• Frankfurt and a mystery destination in October

Frankfurt 2007 Wraps Up

The Frankfurt Book Fair has wound down after another hectic year, and Jason is kicking back at some monastery in the German countryside. Unfortunately, our five-minute phone calls every other day, hampered by my bout with the stomach virus, didn't yield much material for the blog. So instead I'll share some good blog reports posted by publishers from around the globe:

• The Penguin Blog: Trains, Planes, and Book Fairs
• FBF Official Site: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Blogger
• Critical Mass: This Is Your Brain on Frankfurt
• Moderato: "It's Carnage"…Inside the Genteel World of Books

The Trek to Frankfurt Begins

At about this moment, my husband is taking off for the Frankfurt Book Fair. This is arguably the largest gathering of the world's book publishers in one place to buy and sell foreign translation and publication rights. (But it's far from the only one. Here's a calendar of this year's other book fairs around the world. Jason usually also goes to the London Book Fair and the Warsaw Book Fair in addition to Frankfurt.)

Those of you in the know might be asking: "Isn't it a bit early to be leaving for the fair? It doesn't start until next Wednesday!" True. But Jason always takes full advantage of his trans-Atlantic flights and tacks on a few vacation days to go someplace he hasn't been before. Great stories always ensue, such as the time he escorted three Swedish women around Dublin, met Ron Jeremy in the hotel bar in Barcelona, and was a guest at a big, fat Greek wedding in Athens. This time he and his coworker Shawn are heading to Helsinki, Finland, and Tallinn, Estonia. He got some funny looks wearing his wool sweater and coat onto the plane, when it's like 90 degrees here today!

He's promised to be our Frankfurt correspondent and send me some "content" for the blog. But we'll see. Usually he's so busy he barely has time to access his e-mail.

The World's Top 10 Book Publishers

The organizers of the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair send out an e-newsletter to past and future attendees. My husband forwarded the latest edition to me and this caught my eye: A list of the top 10 book publishers in the world, their parent companies, their nation of origin, and how many billions they make a year. So here's the list:

1. Reed Elsevier (Reed Elsevier--UK/NL): 7.6 billion
2. Pearson (Pearson plc--UK): 7.3 billion
3. Thomson (Thomson Corp.--Canada) : 6.6 billion
4. Bertelsmann (Bertelsmann AG--Germany) : 5.9 billion
5. Wolters Kluwer (Wolters Kluwer--NL): 4.8 billion
6. Hachette Livre (Lagardère--France) : 2.56 billion
7. McGraw-Hill Education (The McGraw-Hill Cos.--US) : 2.52 billion
8. Reader’s Digest (Reader’s Digest--US): 2.3 billion
9. Scholastic Corp. (Scholastic--US): 2.2 billion
10. De Agostini Editore (Gruppo De Agostini--Italy): unavailable

The newsletter cites Livres Hebdo, a book-publishing trade publication in France, as the source of this information. The list actually out of date already. In May, the book division of Thomson was acquired by an investment group and renamed Cengage Learning (a name that Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino thinks is a huge handicap for them).

Although the biggest companies aren't headquartered in the U.S., they have massive operations here and own many, many of the companies and imprints we're familiar with, such as Harcourt, Prentice Hall, Random House, and Time Warner.

My Day at BookExpo

Finally I have returned from Book Expo and my subsequent vacation (a week's sojourn on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where instead of staring at a computer screen I was watching dolphins as they patrolled the coast, making sandcastles with my little girl, lazing by the pool, and finishing off the next book in my favorite genre: Brit-chick-lit).

So instead of the usual two or three days at the book fair, I had only one and a half. Here's how it went:

I arrived at my husband's hotel after 6pm on Thursday, and joined him and his coworkers for a late dinner in Chelsea. The next morning I hopped on the shuttle bus to the fair. My seatmate was Catherine Palmer, a well-known Christian fiction author (nice lady!). The ride took a while because of rush-hour traffic, so as soon as I got there I rushed to the autographing area, where the first of four of our authors, Laurence Shatkin, was just getting started signing copies of 225 Best Jobs for Baby Boomers for fans and job seekers. I hovered nearby with our publicist, listening to the exchanges he had with booksellers, librarians, and others. We both took the opportunity to float down a few tables and meet Mo Willems, author of the Knuffle Bunny books and others. His hard-core publicist wouldn't let him personalize the book for my daughter, but he sent his best regards to her anyway.

Then the publicist and I ran for a quick early lunch at the food court, and then back to our booth to await the arrival of our next author to do a signing, Jessica Carter. I fielded a couple of interesting inquiries from passers-by before it was time to head back to the autographing area for Jessica's signing of Double Outsiders: How Women of Color Can Succeed in Corporate America. She had a lot of interest in her book and as a first-time author seemed to enjoy the whole experience. The next signer at her table was Chris Elliot, so I shook his hand and spoke to him a little before taking off for the show floor.

I spent several hours making targeted visits to booths of our competitors (to pick up catalogs and meet my peers). Catalogs are heavy, so I tried to take only the most essential things (and not be, as one of my authors calls it, a "trade-show trick-or-treater"). Still, I ended up weighed down.

At the end of the day I waited in a monstrous line for the shuttle bus, and ended up sitting with a lady who does publishing market research--and works with someone I worked with at Macmillan 16 years ago (small world).

I went back to the hotel and freshened up for dinner. I walked to meet the rest of the JIST gang and authors at a restaurant near Times Square (and the former Macmillan offices at 1633 Broadway, where last century we had sightings of JFK Jr. going to his George offices).

The next morning I intended to go back to the show for another hour or two, but I ended up instead having breakfast with a friend who is a librarian in San Francisco--and whose partner, my friend from high school, is at a career crossroads. I was happy to suggest some books for him!

Then we headed off for the airport. I got home, unpacked, packed, and left the next morning for North Carolina.