When the Leipzig Book Fair was canceled last year after the big publishing houses withdrew, there was much talk of a “heavy blow” for the book industry. But the blow to the fair itself was even heavier.
Not only does the Leipzig book fair, like the Frankfurt book fair, obey economic necessities, but also, like after the Corona trunk fairs of its big sister in Frankfurt, in the wake of the Leipzig cancellation, the question of the usefulness of a book fair arose.
Bookstagram and Booktok
Although both fairs generate attention that goes beyond the book industry and the literary business, right down to the evening news programs, popular publishers and also the relevant medium-sized publishers are now weighing up the costs and benefits of exhibiting at fairs very carefully.
Book deals are done all year round anyway and mostly processed digitally, the publishers are increasingly publishing in summer and winter and no longer preferably around the time of trade fairs, and at an analogue event such as a trade fair, digital innovations and extensions such as Bookstagram, Booktok, etc difficult to depict. Even before social media, the most searched for and rarely found book was in Leipzig and Frankfurt: the e-book.
The pandemic has shaken the successful model of the Leipzig Book Fair, namely to function primarily as a public fair. Book fair director Oliver Zille is cautious with forecasts for the comeback fair, he expects a much smaller audience than in the years before the pandemic. Especially since moving it to late April might not have been that advisable; Nobody likes to say goodbye to habits they have grown fond of.
Preparations in the glass hall of the Leipzig Trade Fair.
In Leipzig it is now important to play to the old strengths again: The fair acts as a forum for smaller publishers in particular, who have suffered much more from the Corona cancellations than the big ones, but did well with the pop-up fair last year knew how to help.
she is the Link between audience and literary producers. And their focus must still be on the east, on south-eastern and eastern Europe – more important than ever in times of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
Gerrit Bartels is a literary editor and visited the Leipzig Book Fair for the first time in 2001.
