The German Publishers & Booksellers Association And Book Fairs : Germany

The professional and trade organization of the book trade is the German Publishers & Booksellers Association in Frankfurt am Main, which brings together companies from all tiers of this branch of industry: publishing houses, firms from the intermediate book trade, and retail booksellers. At the Association’s initiative, an exhibition company was founded in 1964 whose primary task is to organize the Frankfurt Book Fair. This fair is the outstanding event of the year for the international book trade, and a large percentage of rights and license transactions are concluded here. Every year since 1976, the fair has had a different theme. In 1992 it was Mexico, in 1993 Flanders and the Netherlands, in 1994 Brazil, in 1995 Austria, in 1996 Ireland and in 1997 Portugal. In 1998 the focus will be on Switzerland.

At the 1996 fair, more than 9,000 publishing companies from 110 countries exhibited their products. The development of electronic media has taken on great importance in this sector. As a result, the specialty “Electronic Publishing” was introduced at the 1993 Frankfurt Book Fair. The fair culminates in the award of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In 1997 the recipient was Yasar Kemal; among the recent prizewinners were Max Frisch, Yehudi Menuhin, Teddy Kollek, Vladislav Bartoszewski, Hans Jonas, Vaclav Havel, Gyorgy Konrad, Friedrich Schorlemmer, Jorge Semprun and Annemarie Schimmel. The second major book fair is held every spring in Leipzig. It especially serves as an intermediary with the countries of Eastern Europe.