Rights and wrongs in Frankfurt

I n the early years after the Second World War, German publishers in the US occupation zone, encouraged by the occupiers, joined forces to piece together their broken book trade. The task was made more difficult by the loss of their traditional publishing capital, Leipzig, to the Soviet-occupied East. US and British publishers, called in to lend a hand, began trading rights and co-productions among themselves. That, in a nutshell, is the story of the Frankfurter Buchmesse (ask Lord Weidenfeld for more detail).
From the beginning, the Messe has been two separate and distinct events: a bookselling promotion for the German book trade, and the more discrete market for literary rights and coeditions. Now 55 years have gone by, and the basic profile remains the same. The rights exchange is still invisible to the general public, although it may represent a bigger market than the movement of finished or soon to be finished books.
What made Frankfurt work was the attention paid by management to facilitate the invisible side, say by setting up an agents’ centre in a hall containing English-language exhibitors, the originators of most of the world’s valuable copyrights. No one then imagined that the day would come when management--nudged by the German trade’s central committee the Borsenverein--would sacrifice the international to the national.
This year’s fair began, as always, with a pre-fair. This is a lively rights exchange in the lobbies of the poshest hotels, starting on Sunday and Monday, and attaining standing-room only proportions by Tuesday. Meanwhile fair management, sensitive to criticism of its treatment of foreign participants, had opened the agents’ and scouts’ centre on that Tuesday. But everybody seemed to prefer hotel lobbies. The best thing about Tuesday was the international rights meeting, "Doing Business in Asia", with important players among the speakers. The meeting room was filled to capacity with 230 people, all of whom paid the admission fee of € 190.
The agents’ centre, occupying three-quarters of the floor of one of the fair’s largest exhibition buildings, has been moved from its third-floor perch to the more accessible second floor.
Veteran French agent Boris Hoffman thinks this time the fair organisers have got it right. "There will always be some people who aren’t happy. I work with French publishers and they’re just down a floor. Obviously the Germans and Americans are another story." But another fair regular, scout Todd Siegal, of New York’s Franklin & Siegal Agency, works mainly with German and American exhibitors. What would he like to see? "The agents’ centre should be close to American stands."
French-American agent Lora Fountain, based in Paris, also appreciates being one storey closer to the rest of her world. This year she has one of those books that was a sure-fire bestseller even before a line was