The Frankfurt Book Fair – five short days in October, crammed with things to do. But everything that happens during the week of the Book Fair – be it authors readings, conferences, staged events or a new thematic area – is the fruit of months of planning and preparation. In this new series, we’ll present the colleagues whose job it is to make the Frankfurt Book Fair what it is, every year: the place to be, the global city of ideas, the gathering place for the international publishing industry.
Today, we start with Maike Bannas. As project manager in our Media Industries section Maike is responsible for the Frankfurt Book Fair Business Club. Originally from Hamburg, she switched rivers from the Elbe to the Main when she settled in Frankfurt in November 2013. It is her job to ensure trade visitors to the Frankfurt Book Fair can find a sanctuary away from the tumult of the Fair, a place where they can arrange meetings in peace, and where service is given top priority.
Maike, you’ve been on the team of the Frankfurt Book Fair for a year and a half now. What aspects of your work do you enjoy the most?
To emulate one of my all-time favourite books, High Fidelity, here’s my top-five list:
1) The international nature and dynamism of our industry
2) Researching topics and liaising with our experts and speakers
3) Developing and designing new services
4) My colleagues and our clients
5) The adrenaline rush in October
The Frankfurt Book Fair Business Club was only launched last year. Can you describe briefly what new things you’re planning to do this year?
With its mixture of meetings, events and networking options, this year’s Business Club offers trade visitors to the Fair an even more comprehensive range of services. We’re expanding the meeting area significantly, and we’re giving our clients the chance to reserve tables here for their appointments, even in advance of the Book Fair.
Sharing ideas? Negotiating deals? It’s all possible in the Business Club.
Framed by the exclusive Business Club events, the whole experience is dedicated to networking. All our products and services aim to support dialogue and professional exchanges. We illuminate the core trends of the industry, and we help our customers enter into conversation with potential business partners.
On top of that, this year we want to make our guests feel even more comfortable during their stay, and we’ll provide complimentary coffee and water throughout the day. And, of course, we’ll also provide international newspapers and Wi-Fi access free of charge.
Bologna, London, Turin – spring in Europe has always been a time for international book fairs. What, for you, is significance of these industry meetings?
The springtime fairs take place just when we are at our busiest preparing for the autumn in Frankfurt. They provide ideal locations for us to meet our partners and clients; we can use our discussions to assess the new products and services we’re planning and to develop them further.
In this respect, the London Book Fair is certainly one of the most important of the early events for us. We’ll be promoting the Business Club there particularly strongly. Among other things, we’re going to offer a special rate for “early-birds”: all those who decide to purchase a ticket while they’re at the London fair will get a 30% discount. Besides that, we’ll be running a competition in which participants can win one of three week tickets.
Juergen Boos, Director Frankfurt Book Fair, and Brian Murray, CEO HarperCollins, in the Business Club
Which trends have you observed in the last six months?
I’m sure the internationalisation of their business will continue to be important for the publishers – whether that means entering a specific market themselves or cooperating with others, or with respect to the rights and licensing trade.
At the same time, customer-focus will have an even more important role to play at the consumer end of the business. Pure data collection will still be important here, but there will be a growing emphasis on evaluating the collected data. This will not only provide publishers with useful findings for their marketing activities; at the same time, by understanding their customers’ needs and media consumption patterns they will gain important insights for their product design and portfolio management.
Which areas of the Frankfurt Book Fair do you find especially interesting?
Needless to say, the Guest of Honour’s pavilion has something new and exciting to offer every year, with the special presentation by the Guest of Honour taking our visitors on a journey of discovery. If you want to get some fresh air in between appointments, there are also lots of intriguing things to do and places to see on the Agora.
And, of course, trade visitors in particular should be sure not to miss out on the Business Club!
