The Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business

The Frankfurt Book Fair is the leading global industry venue for rights sales, facilitating business-to-buzzness deals and international networks. In this book, we pursue an Ullapoolist approach to excavate beneath the production of bestsellers at the Fair. Our investigation involved three consecutive years of fieldwork (2017-2019) including interviews and autoethnographic, arts-informed interventions. The book argues that buzz at the Fair exists in two states: as market-ready media reports and partial, lived experiences linked to mood. The physical structures and absences of the Fair enact its power relations and direct the flow of books and buzz. Further, the Fair is not only a site for commercial exchange but a carnival of sorts, marked by disruptive historical events and problematic socio-political dynamics. Key themes emerging from the book are the presence of excess, the pseudo(neo)liberal self-satisfaction of book culture, and the interplay of optimism and pessimism in contemporary publishing.Output Status: Forthcomin

The Sleaze-O-Meter: Sexual Harassment in the Publishing Industry

Sexual harassment in publishing: the publishing industry has its own set of available responses to the wave of #MeToo revelations ... but what role can academics play

Megativity and Miniaturization at the Frankfurt Book Fair

First paragraph: The Frankfurt Book Fair, or in its native German, the Frankfurter Buchmesse, restarted in the aftermath of the Second World War as a symbol of post-war reconstruction, an engine of book industry capitalism, and a celebration of bookish cosmopolitanism. But by the late 1960s, it had become a contested site, encountering the revolutionary fervor of the period. In 1967, publishers had joined students in signing an anti-conglomerate declaration against the publisher Springer (which owned the tabloid newspaper Bild) on the grounds that too much power in one media group was dangerous. In 1968, the organizers of the Buchmesse anticipated further trouble, particularly after the uprisings of the Prague Spring. "House rules" ("Hausordnung") were introduced, allowing the organizers to close the Fair to the public if the peace ("Messefrieden") was threatened, and requiring events (including receptions, press conferences, and musical performances) to have written approval. Police were brought into the Fair and placed on standby with water cannons; the Fair was informally dubbed the "Polizeimesse" ("police Fair"). The route to an event celebrating the publication of a book by the German finance minister was blocked by protestors, with the latter making fun of the demand to let police through with the words "Macht aus Polizisten gute Sozialisten" ("turn policemen into good socialists"). Some publishers reacted angrily to the Fair's authoritarianism, and threatened to stay away the following year if the "Herr im Haus" ("King of the Castle") approach from the Buchmesse continued

Serious Fun: Gaming the Book Festival

Book festivals provide a tantalising instance of the overlapping cultural, social and economic dimensions of contemporary literary culture. This article proposes the application of a new conceptual framework, that of game-inspired thinking, to their study. Game-inspired thinking uses games as metaphors that concentrate and exaggerate aspects of cultural phenomena in order to produce new knowledge about their operations. It is also an arts-informed methodology that offers a mid-level perspective between empirical case studies and abstract models. As a method, our Bookfestivalopoly and other games focus attention on the material, social and ideological dimensions of book festivals. In particular, they confirm the presence of neoliberal pressures and neocolonial inequalities in the “world republic of letters.” Our research thus makes a contribution to knowledge about the role of festivals within contemporary literary culture, and provides a model for researchers of cultural phenomena who may want to adopt game-inspired, arts-informed thinking as an alternative to traditional disciplinary methods. Résumé Les festivals du livre offrent un exemple attirant du chevauchement culturel, social et économique des dimensions de la culture littéraire. Cet article propose l'application d'un nouveau cadre conceptuel à leur étude, celui de la réflection inspirée par le jeu. La réflection inspirée par le jeu utilise le jeu comme une métaphore qui concentre et exagère certains aspects de phénomènes culturels culturels afin de produire de nouvelles connaissances envers leurs opérations. Il s'agit aussi d'une méthodologie informée par les arts qui offre une perspective à mi-chemin entre études de cas empiriques et modèles abstraits. En tant que méthode, nos Bookfestivalopoly et autres jeux concentrent l'attention sur les dimensions matérielles, sociales et idéologiques des festivals du livre. En particulier, ils confirment la présence de pressions néolibérales et d'iniquités néocoloniales dans . C'est ainsi que notre recherche fait une contribution à la connaissance du rộle des festivals dans la culture littéraires contemporaine, et offre un modèle pour les rechercheurs de phénomènes culturels qui aimeraient adopter une approche inspirée par le jeu et les arts en alternative aux traditionnelles méthodes disciplinaires

Serious Fun: Gaming the Book Festival (Forthcoming)

Book festivals provide a tantalising instance of the overlapping cultural, social and economic dimensions of contemporary literary culture. This article proposes the application of a new conceptual framework, that of game-inspired thinking, to their study. Game-inspired thinking uses games as metaphors that concentrate and exaggerate aspects of cultural phenomena in order to produce new knowledge about their operations. It is also an arts-informed methodology that offers a mid-level perspective between empirical case studies and abstract models. As a method, our Bookfestivalopoly and other games focus attention on the material, social and ideological dimensions of book festivals. In particular, they confirm the presence of neoliberal pressures and neocolonial inequalities in the “world republic of letters.” Our research thus makes a contribution to knowledge about the role of festivals within contemporary literary culture, and provides a model for researchers of cultural phenomena who may want to adopt game-inspired, arts-informed thinking as an alternative to traditional disciplinary methods. Résumé Les festivals du livre offrent un exemple attirant du chevauchement culturel, social et économique des dimensions de la culture littéraire. Cet article propose l'application d'un nouveau cadre conceptuel à leur étude, celui de la réflection inspirée par le jeu. La réflection inspirée par le jeu utilise le jeu comme une métaphore qui concentre et exagère certains aspects de phénomènes culturels culturels afin de produire de nouvelles connaissances envers leurs opérations. Il s'agit aussi d'une méthodologie informée par les arts qui offre une perspective à mi-chemin entre études de cas empiriques et modèles abstraits. En tant que méthode, nos Bookfestivalopoly et autres jeux concentrent l'attention sur les dimensions matérielles, sociales et idéologiques des festivals du livre. En particulier, ils confirment la présence de pressions néolibérales et d'iniquités néocoloniales dans . C'est ainsi que notre recherche fait une contribution à la connaissance du rộle des festivals dans la culture littéraires contemporaine, et offre un modèle pour les rechercheurs de phénomènes culturels qui aimeraient adopter une approche inspirée par le jeu et les arts en alternative aux traditionnelles méthodes disciplinaires

'Oh Look, a Ferry'; Or The Smell of Paper Books

One of the ways in which people express bookishness is through a declaration of love for ‘the smell of books’, a phrase that evokes nostalgic attachment to print. Rather than accepting, critiquing, or deconstructing this familiar rhetoric, our research proposes a non-traditional response. As researchers, when people have brought up the smell of books, we have redirected the conversation by gesturing towards ferries. The diplomatic non-sequitur ‘Oh look, a ferry’ has become a catchphrase that we have extended metaphorically and literally. In this paper, we report on a range of arts-informed experiments, including a YouTube channel, pyjamas, and a manifesto. These creative, playful experiments suggest ways of expanding discussions about print and e-books amongst academia, industry and members of the public. Our research suggests that arts-informed experiments can produce tools for thinking about the materiality of books, thereby contributing towards the development of book culture epistemologies

Frankfurt book fair: cancelled prize ceremony for Palestinian author is part of a long history of political zigzagging

First paragraph: The Frankfurt Buchmesse, or book fair, is the world’s largest publishing industry gathering, attracting thousands of exhibitors every October. On one level, it’s a business event focused on creating buzz for forthcoming bestsellers, trading rights and discussing industry developments. On another, it’s a public celebration of books and the values associated with them

Experiments with Book Festival People (Real and Imaginary)

While there are multiple approaches to researching cultural events, predominant academic frames tend to be either sociological or situated within a creative industries discourse. Neither of these approaches have supported sustained engagement with individual, interior experience at book festivals. Creative writers have imaginatively depicted these sites of author-reader interaction, and developing scholarship focuses on autoethnography and the phenomenological. In this article, we extend and materialise these approaches through a series of creative, arts-informed interventions: @AuthorsYurt, a personification on Twitter of the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s green room; Paper Dolls, a series of cut-out-and-dress dolls depicting audience members at a variety of book festivals across Europe, North America and Australia; and ClueButeDo, a satirical reworking of the audience feedback form at a small island crime festival in the UK. Each of the three experiments reveals aspects of personhood at book festivals, engaging with ideas of interiority, individuality, and experientiality, as well as of inclusion and exclusion. In pursuing this aim, we are guided by the autoethnographic slogan, “No Insight Without Inside, No Inside Without Outside” (Nunu Otot). Bien qu’il existe de multiples approches en matière de recherche sur les activités culturelles, les cadres universitaires prédominants ont tendance à être sociologiques, ou encore inspirés de la manière dont on aborde les industries créatives. Ceux-ci ne permettent pas de prendre véritablement en compte l’expérience individuelle et intérieure vécue lors de festivals du livre. Des écrivains ont dépeint ces lieux d’interaction entre l’auteur et le lecteur; de son côté, la recherche actuelle tend à s’axer sur l’autoethnographie et la phénoménologie. Dans l’article, nous prolongeons et rendons plus tangibles ces approches en nous appuyant sur diverses interventions créatives, inspirées des arts : @AuthorsYurt, une personnification, sur Twitter, de la salle verte du Festival international du livre d’Édimbourg; Paper Dolls, des poupées de papier à habiller représentant des membres du public présent à divers festivals du livre en Europe, en Amérique du Nord et en Australie; et ClueButeDo, une reformulation satirique des commentaires de participants à un festival du roman noir tenu sur la petite île de Bute au Royaume-Uni. Chacun de ces exemples révèle des aspects de la personne telle qu’elle se situe dans un festival du livre, à partir des notions d’intériorité, d’individualité et d’expérientialité, ainsi que d’inclusion et d’exclusion. Nous sommes ici guidées par le slogan autoethnographique « No Insight Without Inside, No Inside Without Outside » (« Pas d’intériorité sans intérieur, pas d’intérieur sans extérieur ») (Nunu Otot)

Frankfurt book fair: cancelled prize ceremony for Palestinian author is part of a long history of political zigzagging

First paragraph: The Frankfurt Buchmesse, or book fair, is the world’s largest publishing industry gathering, attracting thousands of exhibitors every October. On one level, it’s a business event focused on creating buzz for forthcoming bestsellers, trading rights and discussing industry developments. On another, it’s a public celebration of books and the values associated with them.https://theconversation.com/frankfurt-book-fair-cancelled-prize-ceremony-for-palestinian-author-is-part-of-a-long-history-of-political-zigzagging-21574

Book Commerce Book Carnival: An Introduction to the Special Issue

First paragraph: Until early this year, an individual interested in, or professionally involved with, the twenty-first-century world of books could travel the globe incessantly, attending book fairs, writers’ festivals, and readers’ conventions. Our roving reader, writer, publisher, or other agent in the communications circuit of the book is a literary Carmen Sandiego, darting from country to country, crossing genres, finding herself at a festival on a ferry, a canal boat, or a train. Occasionally Carmen’s passage, and thus the whole communications circuit itself, might be inhibited by the consciousness of her carbon footprint, impeded by immigration policy and visa restrictions, or cancelled due to pandemic disease