53rd Frankfurt Book Fair - Marketplace of Ideas

October 10-15, 2001 is the week the world of publishing comes to Frankfurt, Germany.
The international publishing community gets together every year in October at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the marketplace of ideas, renewing old acquaintances and making new contacts, spotting the trends and innovations and trading in rights and licenses.

This year's 53rd Frankfurt Book Fair again expects 6,800 publishing companies from more than 100 countries, ready to present their products - books and electronic publications, comics, art, print-on-demand technology and services for the publishing industry.

The event attracts 300,000 people, half of them professionals or trade visitors. At the same time, the Frankfurt Book Fair is a major cultural festival, involving the widest variety of presentations. The diversity of contents is reflected in a total of more than 1000 author events, as well as the many fixtures offered by the Guest of Honor - in this case Greece - with exhibitions, concerts, film programs and readings. An international center featuring personal appearances and discussions with authors as well as specialist talks, together with targeted sponsorship programs to ensure the presence of publishers from small countries and emerging markets: all this is part of Frankfurt's unique atmosphere.

With exclusive admission for trade visitors from Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 October, the working fair brings together all sectors of the publishing industry. Literary agents and publishing companies, scouts and editors negotiate forthcoming new publications - from highly specialized niche titles to mega- bestsellers. For the publishing companies' PR and marketing departments, Frankfurt is a showcase for their latest products, to be viewed and assessed by 10,000 journalists among others, to say nothing of the traders and professional experts.

The Frankfurt Book Fair has existed in its present format since 1949. Frankfurt, founded in 794 as "Franconovurd" - the "League of the Free" - has always been a place for meeting and trading. The sale of books and trade between printers go back more than 500 years. The new developments of the future, both in terms of media and content, will always find a platform in Frankfurt, where tradition and innovation can meet without question.

The 53rd Frankfurt Book Fair will enable its exhibitors and visitors to arrange their activities more effectively compared to the previous year, thanks to a more compact layout grouped around the agora of the fair. The new allocation of exhibition halls includes the following focal groups:

Hall 1: Electronic Media
Halls 3 and 4: German-language mainstream publishers as well as Comics and Children's Books (in Hall 3.0), Religion (3.1), Tourism (4.0), Art (4.1)
Hall 4.2: Science
Hall 5.0: Central and Eastern Europe, Greece, Arab countries
Hall 5.1: Italy, Spain, Latin America (except Brazil)
Hall 6.0: Scandinavia, Netherlands, Asia and Africa
Hall 6.1: France, Portugal, Brazil, Switzerland (fr.)
Hall 6.2: Literary Agents' Centre
Hall 8: USA, Britain, Ireland, (Anglophone) Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel.