Above: Editorial Director Helga Schier speaking to a visitor to the CamCat booth at Frankfurt Buchmesse 2022.

Above: A peek inside the CamCat booth at Frankfurt Buchmesse 2022.

Despite the global pandemic, Frankfurt Book Fair in 2021 had over 36,000 trade visitors from over 105 countries attend the show. CamCat attended the 2021 show virtually through our wonderful friends at Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), of which we are members.

Above: The IBPA booth at Frankfurt Buchmesse 2022.

This year, the show took place primarily in person from October 19-23, 2022 with many exhibitors excited to be at the show in person again. We were excited to see the huge meeting space at our distributor’s booth, Independent Publishers Group.

Above: IPG’s meeting space at the Frankfurt Buchmesse 2022.

Frankfurt Buchmesse’s press release states that “with 4,000 exhibitors from 95 countries on ten floors throughout the exhibition halls, along with numerous stages across the fairgrounds and more than 2,000 events and 4,000 accredited journalists, Frankfurter Buchmesse (19–23 October 2022) is back in full force.” The show is an important event for CamCat to be at to develop relationships with international publishers for potential translations of our titles and other opportunities that may arise. 

As far as this year’s demographics, the press release also states that “about two-thirds of the fair’s exhibitors come from outside Germany. Participation by Asian exhibitors is pleasingly high; North America and Central and Southern Europe are particularly well represented among the countries present. Spain accounts for a significant share here: the over 320 exhibitors and agents from the 2022 Guest of Honour country represent all of Spain’s linguistic regions, and Spanish participants even make up the third-largest continent at the fully booked Literary Agents & Scouts Center (LitAg), after the UK and the US.”

Above: A peek inside the CamCat booth at Frankfurt Buchmesse 2022.

We noted the highlight of BookTok, the book community on TikTok, at the show and also the big emphasis on audio, be it audiobooks or podcasts. On Sunday, October 23rd, TikTok will host its own stage, bringing together popular creators at the show and encouraging them to create content live while at the stage. For audio, the press release states that “some 250 square metres of the Frankfurt Audio area (Hall 3.1) will be putting a spotlight on the spoken word.” We’ve seen both topics discussed in a number of articles in the US trade industry, and it was interesting to see their influence on the international markets also.

Above: Editorial Director Helga Schier speaking to a visitor at the CamCat booth at Frankfurt Buchmesse 2022.

In our booth, we displayed our best reviewed and award-winning backlist titles, our 2022 titles, and ARCs of our upcoming 2023 titles to the show. Anyone who stops by can take our rights catalog for a more comprehensive look at our list. You can view the digital catalog here. For those interested in rights or other business inquiries, you can reach out to Bill Lehto, our Director of Business Services, at bill [at] camcatpublishing [dot] com.