My last days at the Frankfurt Book Fair

      Next year - I'm already planning it! - I will stay for the whole Fair. It was a difficult decision but with friends in Berlin and Brussels to visit in one week before my week in London, I decided to miss Sunday, the last day of the Fair. Unfortunately, this meant leaving Maggie, Richard and Adrian alone to tidy up our much-loved NZ Society of Authors stand on the Monday, and also missing a more relaxed day. 
      Saturday was a lovely day - Hall 3 was total madness on the Friday and over the whole weekend, as the public come in to look at the pick of German publishing (many of them in fancy dress - wonderfully entertaining!) -  but in Hall 8, the English-speaking Hall, it was much more laid-back. I visited the Princeton University Press stand and had a lovely chat with the two staff there - one of my brothers is a professor in the classics department at Princeton, and I adored the town and the university when I visited them some time ago.
      I decided to visit the Harvard University Press stand as well, to find their two staff also in leisurely chat mode, a big change from how busy all the stands had been from Wednesday to Friday. The more relaxed pace meant I was able to pluck up the courage to ask them what it would take to publish an article in the magnificent Harvard Business Review, to which I subscribe. They were very helpful and I came away with a great book on creativity, an area of great interest (see my other blog).
      I'd been warned that authors were not really welcome at the Fair as it is a business-to-business trade affair, with publishers, agents and scouts the main players. But all the publishers I visited were extremely helpful and I was very happy to leave materials with them about Niki Harre's book and my own, for their publishing, editorial and rights staff to consider after the Fair.
      Two New Zealand authors (Tui Allen and Mervyn Noel Whitley Jnr) and Sylvia, a German author living in Finland whose second name escaped me, also spoke at the seminar. I've now read Tui's book, a remarkable vision, while Mervyn and Sylvia are really pushing the boundaries of what a book can be.
      Next year will be fun - Brazil is the 2013 guest of honour - so I will finish another book or two and come again.
      And in one of those serendipitous encounters for which the Frankfurt Book Fair is so famous, on Sunday morning on the train to the main station en route to catch my train to Berlin, I met a charming Malaysian publisher - the second I'd met who wanted to know how to go about becoming the guest of honour. Thanks to marvellous expositions from  Carole Beu and Maggie Tarver, I am confident that with their help, I can pull together a list of key New Zealand contacts for the Guest of Honour programme, including a list of contacts from the New Zealand publishing supply chain - authors, publishers, printers, booksellers and of course the Book Council. Malaysia as Guest of Honour in 2015 or 2016? A great plan!
      Now for the real work - following up on the wonderful contacts made at the Fair and coming up with a plan to fund my writing!

More New Zealand authors at the Frankfurt Book Fair

      Among the other authors able to attend the Fair are Greg Scowen (The Spanish Helmet), Tui Allen (Ripple),  Jenny Mortimer (Knock the bastard off), Anna Gowan (Hollie Chips), Rachel McAlpine (Scarlet Heels, as well as some very good corporate communication books), Ron Riddell (A love beyond) and Owen Scott (Deep beyond the reef). Richard Webster and Adrian Blackburn also have their recent books on display at the New Zealand Society of Authors stand, and Michael Gill (Himalayan hospitals - Sir Edmund Hillary's Everest legacy) put in an appearance yesterday, too.
      And writer and performer extraordinaire Gerry Paul (Hank the wrestling shark) has been performing that book to music at 4pm every day to the delight of people at the surrounding stands and passers-by. Yesterday he also performed a joyful song about composting, reminiscent of the old song "Working on the chain gang"; "got no legs, got no arms, spend my days working on the worm farm" - the voice of the hard-working tiger worms!
      One of my speaker colleagues, Sylvia Bowden, has two books on the stand (How to stop your kids from going broke; and Get out of my pocket) though she isn't at the Fair. 30-odd other authors are not at the Fair but their books have been attracting steady interest, and all comers are given the very classy catalogue of all the books on the stand.
      Well-known gardening writer Kerry Carman has two books on the stand and kindly donated a dozen exquisite flower prints for a daily raffle. We all put the business cards of our publishing contacts in for the draw and each day two lucky publishers get to choose which print they would like - two of my contacts have won so far and were truly delighted. The raffle and Gerry's performances make our wee stand a "Stand-out" stand in the nicest possible way!
      We've also been visited by several very happy publishers from the Publishers Association of New Zealand stand just round the corner - this collective stand is doing very well and has been a great venture for them.
      And of course the parties have been happening - Tui Allen was invited to the Latvian publishers stand (the population of Latvia is only 2 million!) and feasted on very good cheese and chocolate (not somehow the cuisine I would have expected...).
      Yesterday afternoon we gate-crashed the Australian publishers' stand yesterday and expect to welcome them to the Publishers Association party tonight.
      Several of us were lucky enough to be interviewed for a UK publisher's journal and we've all been giving readings from or presentations about our books - excellent practice and a privilege to gain an insight into our colleagues' work.
      I have more publishers to visit today and hope to have time to revisit the New Zealand Pavilion again tomorrow to see some of our very famous authors in action. And will upload some photos when I can figure out how to do it....

Being at the Frankfurt Fair is fantastic fun!

      There is so much to tell already.... the happy coincidences that saw three of the independent authors share the same flights from New Zealand and hooking up with incomparable Carole Beu of the Women's bookshop on the same flights... hearing her story of being able to go as a result of an introduction from a friend in publishing ... That story is worth hearing -  Carole's friend said she'd "watched Carole's growing success over more than 20 years, thoroughly enjoyed how Carole had just chaired an author interview at the NZ Writers and Readers Festival, and thought she might like an introduction..." to a young woman who is an arts reporter for one of the major daily Frankfurt papers. Sylvia, this young woman, said she had a spare room in her apartment especially for a New Zealander to stay with her over the time of the Frankfurt Fair. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person - Carole does so much for books in New Zealand. And at the airport in Frankfurt, Sylvia was duly waiting to pick Carole up and despite our vast quantities of luggage, gave a lift to two more passengers, me and Tui Allen (author of "Ripple"), taking us to the door of our hotel. The delightful and clearly gifted Sylvia is interviewing some of New Zealand's most famous authors in some of the many events at and associated with the Fair.
      It was lovely to drive through forests just turning into their autumn colours and past some exquisite old apartment buildings and houses - it made me realise how much I've missed Europe since my last trip many years ago. After a good nights sleep, what fun to explore the local centre and discover a genuine marketplace full of marvellous fruit and vegetables and more.
      Later that day (Tuesday) we went to the two opening ceremonies; that of the Fair itself and of the New Zealand Pavilion - as this year's country Guest of Honour at the Fair. We hooked up with Jenny Mortimer ("Knock the bastard off") and went off in a convoy of four - we got our tickets through the extreme smarts and generosity of redoubtable Switzerland-based kiwi author, Greg Scowen ("The Spanish Helmet"). On the way in we met Louise Ryder, wife of the New Zealand Ambassador to Berlin, a charming woman, who was accompanying Mary English to the grand opening ceremony. Both women were kind enough to be genuinely interested in our work, with Mary taking photos of us with our cameras!
      Bill English gave a very well-received speech which I thought was an excellent one, and Bill Manhire and Joy Cowley also gave two great speeches among those from some of Germany's and Frankfurt's leading literary and government figures.
      We were late for the opening of the New Zealand Pavilion, and arrived to find it in pitch darkness with a large and very convincing moon at the entrance - our 2012 theme is "While you were sleeping" - subtext presumably "we have been writing", far away in the antipodes - to a vigorous haka performance followed by some highly imaginative excerpts of New Zealand writing in films and animations. Excellent use was made of the shallow pools of water in the Pavilion to stage some live readings including one taking place under a deluge of water!
      Mingling outside, we got chatting to a mother and daughter from Frankfurt; the mother coming to sell her short ebooks to publishers and the daughter in charge of the Book Fair activities at the Frankfurt public library. She said the library has done this for the last 12 years or more, and it is absolutely huge now. Events as part of the Fair are taking place all over the city, and the city of Frankfurt itself has generously come to the party by giving all ticket-holders free transport on the wonderful public transport system.
      The Fair proper got under way the following morning and a rather nervous bunch of newbie authors gathered at the New Zealand Society of Authors Stand where we were made most welcome, and taken under the protective wings of NZSA CEO Maggie Tarver, well-known journalist and author Adrian Blackburn and New Zealand writing's best-kept secret, Richard Webster. These three undertook to have someone on the Stand at all times and offered to accompany us to any meetings with publishers. I've attended a couple of workshops with Richard before, so he kindly came with me to my first meeting, with Eric Dobby of Global Professional Publishing. I was quite keyed up but Richard made some gentle opening remark that eased us into conversation, and ended up having a highly animated and enjoyable conversation with Eric and had no qualms about handing over my business card and two flyers and will email him more information after the Fair.
      On the way back to the NZSA Stand, I spotted another of my target publishers, HRD (Human Resource Development) Press, and asked Richard if it was okay to bowl up without an appointment. With his blessing and deeply grateful for his support, in I went and had another great conversation with Global Marketing Manager Sam McLeod.
      Publishers are very nice people! More on the other New Zealand authors and the vast Halls of the Fair in my next post....