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Statement by the Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Lorenzo A. Rudolf - Tuesday, 9 October 2001
Rudolf notes Fair's place as a bastion of free speech and open-mindedness; applauds New York publishers' involvement.
Ladies and Gentlemen,I am pleased to welcome you to the opening press conference for the 53rd Frankfurt Book Fair. 6,661 individual exhibitors will be here from 105 countries. They include 2,472 German exhibitors. There are also another 76 national and collective stands. Give or take a few percentage points, this matches up to last year's figures.
We do have a slight decline of 4 per cent in the number of individual exhibitors. At the same time, rented stand area has increased by about one per cent. This apparently contradictory trend - slight decline in the individual exhibitors who between them nevertheless rent more stand space from us - is something we have been noticing for several years. It reflects the advancing agglomeration process on the market. In spite of this, the book market in Germany and indeed internationally, still represents one of the most diverse and culturally complex networks that we know.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I would very much like just to carry on as has been usual for years at this press conference for the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair and describe to you the way in which the book market and book culture are reflected in this fair, and how this fair is a showcase both for the market and for cultural life.
However, my awareness and my orientation have had to readjust repeatedly over the past few weeks - I am sure you have felt the same.
It is just a month ago that many of us saw live on television an attack that was directed not just against a building and its occupants, but against an entire system of values. Upholding as it does freedom of speech and open-minded encounter between different cultures, this system of values also pertains to the Frankfurt Book Fair.
This fundamental connection was quickly obvious to all of us in Frankfurt. But then came the many other questions. I should like to look into a few of those in brief at least.
Once we had been able to make sure during those anxious days after the 11th of September that there were no direct casualties among our friends and partners, our exhibitors and colleagues, it was all the more moving to experience - in direct conversation, but also through reports and articles - how publishing people in New York and soon after, everywhere in the world, resolutely announced: of course we are coming to Frankfurt just the same. We are not going to let anyone dictate to us when and how we go about our business or carry on with our exchange of ideas and views.
So I know already today that the fair before us will not be a Book Fair in the usual atmosphere of bustle and routine. It is far more probable that many appointments, talks and encounters will be characterized by particularly vigorous, particularly impressive debate, both culturally and politically.
It is our aim as organizers to meet these needs in as many ways as possible.
Together with those responsible for security, we will do our best to ensure optimum and safe conditions for exhibitors and the public.
But we will also be making every effort, wherever necessary, to provide the platform and the appropriate scope for authors, publishers and the media to pursue here in Frankfurt that dense, focused and compact exchange of inspiration and ideas in all the diversity that typifies the unique atmosphere of dialogue in Frankfurt.
We have not changed our planned program. Far rather, we are confident that thanks to the wide range of topics and the people present, the already scheduled readings, discussion sessions and receptions will ensure that this Book Fair can be a political as well as a cultural and intellectual forum.
To find everything else that may be of interest to you, may I refer you to the Calendar of Events, the press folder and our Internet site at www.frankfurt-book-fair.com which will provide you with the best overview of the several thousand events and all our exhibitors with their various key focuses and products.
In the last few years we have set up an "International Centre", this year in Hall 5.0, with an attractive mixture of literary entertainment and background information provided by the experts. A wide diversity is on offer, from debate on freedom of speech in the Arab region to a talk on the recently deceased French publisher Jérôme Lindon and at the weekend, the latest in crime literature.
The electronic media have long since found their way into all the halls and every corner at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Every third exhibitor now shows e-publications. The range extends from audiobooks to databases, so that although the Electronic Media hall - this year Hall 1 - is the showcase for many new products, a whole series of other areas, from the Librarians' Centre IBLC in Hall 6.2 to STM in 4.2, also feature aspects of digital publishing.
An audiobook in CD format with examples of new Greek literature has been produced for the first time this year and offers a direct introduction to the contemporary literature of our Guest of Honor, Greece.
As a background to important discussions, readings, concerts and presentations, the exhibition on Greek culture - between "Vision and Tradition" - is located in the new Forum directly above the Press Centre in the same building. This is also where you can obtain details of the entire Greek program with cultural highlights all over Frankfurt: exhibitions in almost all the museums, more authors' readings, but concerts too - such as tomorrow evening with Agnes Baltsa, performing both classical songs and Greek rembetiko.
I have already referred several times to specific halls. From our advance notices you will certainly have already seen that the entire layout of the Frankfurt Book Fair has been rearranged for this year.
The new Hall 3 and the also newly built Forum were what made it possible for us to concentrate large parts of the fair around the central area of the agora, and to shorten distances between the halls. You have the details in your folders and on the routefinder signs everywhere at the fair. As a rough guide, I will say this much: German-language publishing companies are now in Hall 3 and 4. The international publishing companies are in Halls 5, 6 and in the case of English-language publishers, Hall 8. As already mentioned, the electronic media are in Hall 1. The Press Centre is in the Forum, not far from here.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The global repercussions of September 11 are so far-reaching not least against the background of developments that go back far further, of course. The globalization that for some years has presented completely new challenges to publishing as well, means for us that a cultural industry such as that of the publishing companies must increasingly override old language barriers and nation-state boundaries and operate within an international cultural network.
The complexity of the strategic decisions that arise from this was something made very obvious to us at yesterday's "Frankfurt Big Questions" Conference, organized for the first time in conjunction with the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The Book Fair must also face up to the relevant challenges, if it is to remain a showcase and a trend barometer for the industry.
Headlined "Frankfurt in New York", a new event for trading in rights and licenses will be held for the first time next year in New York. This is a Frankfurt Book Fair project together with two partners in New York itself, namely Michael Cader, publisher of the information service Publishers Lunch, and Mike Shatzkin, co-organizer of our Big Questions Conference.
We had been approached by colleagues from this market suggesting that an additional opportunity for rights trading should be developed in New York, as the world's publishing capital. For two days, on 29 and 30 April 2002, we plan to offer all rights professionals the best possible setting in New York for them to discover new titles and to do business. It seemed important for us to take the initiative here, but I should like to make it quite clear now that we are open to all who wish to be part of this undertaking.
I should also like to draw your attention to another, completely different project.
For almost six months now, this time with a partner here in Frankfurt, the communication service provider Maleki Group, we have been working on plans for a highly ambitious conference to be held for the first time for the Book Fair in 2002: "Frankfurt Futura Mundi".
At the outset of advance planning in early summer, the vision of new intellectual aspirations for the Frankfurt Book Fair had already emerged. This congress project, entitled "Frankfurt Futura Mundi" does not look to the future in its name alone. With intellectuals from the fields of literature, science, business and politics, it sets out to develop discussion of the questions facing humankind for the future.
The launching of Frankfurt Futura Mundi in October 2002 will subscribe to the dictum of Abraham Lincoln that "a house divided in itself cannot stand". Discussions at the congress will look at the conflicts arising in the world as a result of major global fault lines. Key themes will include the challenges posed to cultural identities by globalization, the dangers facing the concept of equality in the age of biotechnology and the division created in the world by the digital gap increasingly separating rich and poor countries.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
We do not want to behave as if nothing had happened. But nor do we want to interrupt for a single moment the process of dialogue and exchange, the coming together of writers, publishers, booksellers and readers from more than 100 countries, who together make up the Frankfurt Book Fair. It is in this spirit that I am particularly glad to say that the Book Fair in Frankfurt will take place in the usual way.
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See more opening remarks from Dr. Hubertus Schenkel, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Ausstellungs-und Messe GmbH, on the state of e-books and e-commerce, in this month's E-Book News column.