It was great to be at Frankfurt Book Fair this year to meet with people face to face again as things continue to get back to normal.
While total attendance was still half of its pre-pandemic levels, it had more than doubled from 2021, with over 90,000 attendees and 4,000 exhibitors from 95 countries spread out across the huge sprawl of the messe.
This was my first year at Frankfurt and it was nice to finally put faces to the names of our various partners. I met up with colleagues from Ingram, IPG, Durnell, Missing Link, PLS, Copyright Clearance Centre, OpenAthens, JSTOR and plenty (plenty!) more.
We were on the IPG stand between our fellow Uni Presses from Wales and Bristol so we had a good chance to catch up with new and familiar faces. Our days were kept busy with back-to-back meetings, and I had many positive rights discussions with publishers from all over the world. By four o’clock the stands around started bringing out bagels and schnitzel and Edel Pils beer. One stand even brought out an oompah band dressed in Bavarian lederhosen.
Although by the end I was exhausted, the atmosphere remained electric – people were happy about getting back to in-person meetings and seeing what our fellow publishers have been up to and you could feel it. It’s all well and good to see book covers on a computer screen, but there’s nothing like seeing them in print!
We’re already looking forward to next year.
Christian Lea, Sales Support Executive, Manchester University Press