Press

8 Questions for JUERGEN BOOS(岳根 • 博思)
SD Original, November 30. 1999
Mr. Boos, what have you been busy with lately?
The first four months of this year have been quite busy for us: Germany was invited as Guest of Honour at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, and Frankfurt was entrusted with curating the programme together with our partners and organising the huge stand. Earlier this month, we announced our cooperation with MP Singapore and the Singapore Book Publishers Association (SBPA). Together, we will bring StoryDrive Asia to Singapore in November 2016 - one of the most dynamic growth markets in Southeast Asia. Last but not least, we decided to take a majority stake in IPR License, an online platform for trading rights and licenses.
You mentioned that Germany was GoH at Bologna. What was your impression there?
Being the guest of honour in Bologna was – indeed a very great honour, but also a challenge. It comes with very high expectations. Guest of honour must offer new ideas and impetus, as well as enrich the fair and the whole city. I think we did a very good job at showing the world how creative and versatile German illustrators actually are and that they have a very high level of professionalism. By “we” I mean the organizers – Frankfurt Book Fair and the Italian Goethe Institute – as well as all the illustrators who were involved, and all the people that designed and curated the exhibition.
What are the main focus/topics/challenges among European publishers nowadays?
A trend that we observe closely concerns not just the publishing houses in Europe, but worldwide: the user behaviour of readers. The latest figures were recently presented at the Publishers Forum in Berlin and they show us that in the UK, 86% of all users spend their time online using Apps, with Facebook and Gaming taking the lead. At the same time we can see that sales figures of print books in many countries are starting to recover, the UK alone saw a rise in demand for print books in the first quarter of the year by 11.4%. Speaking from a long-term perspective, specific categories like travel guides might move to the digital realm, novels and crime thriller titles are much sought-after in print, especially in countries where the price for print books and e-books are almost the same. In summary, we can say that the e-book business is less dynamic now and that print books and e-books will continue to co-exist. In contrast to Amazon, Google and Facebook, who all know their users and their purchasing behaviour very well, publishers often do not know so much about the consumer behaviour of their customers. It is important that publishers work harder on this.
What are the highlights of this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair?
Of course, there are a number of new elements and innovations worth watching out for.
This year, the Frankfurt Book Fair is introducing a new format called ARTS Plus, which builds on the extensive influence that the arts (and books!) have on other sectors. The aim is to create an attractive ecosystem of creative people, brands and publishers, but also researchers, scientists, museums and digital heritage players who are at the centre of this new trade in cultural IP – the new renaissance women and renaissance men.
And with the already very successful format “classroom of the future”, we take a look into the future of learning in the digital age. This year we will focus on early childhood development.
FBM is the most important copyright trade centre in the world. How is LitAg doing this year?
The rights trade has always been an import pillar of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The tables in our literary agents and scouts centre were already sold out in early March, and we will have a Publishers’ Rights Corner on Tuesday for the first time, right next to the agents’ centre, where rights managers can hold their appointments and negotiations.
What kind of strategy do you pursue in your international cooperation projects to promote young professionals?
For a few years now we support an initiative to promote young professionals. We do this in cooperation with different media of the industry, like The Bookseller from Great Britain, Publishers Weekly in the US, Publish News Brazil and Börsenblatt in Germany. In 2016, we brought this project to China as well, where we cooperate with China Publishers Magazine.
By the time of the Beijing Book Fair we will be able to identify 20 winners, of which the top five will receive the title “Chinese young stars”. I am very much looking forward to meeting the young stars in Frankfurt.
FBM in conjunction with ICIA is going to organize the first Global Illustration Award (GIA) in 2016. Why is this award important?
Illustrators and their publishers are very relevant and increasingly so. We like the idea that an award like this might connect publishers and illustrators at a global level. It might help create business and opportunities for international collaboration. By helping talented illustrators get more recognition, we can help them make themselves known to publishers and clients, nd you can see how it all makes sense and comes together in the end: GIA can be a part of the Arts+ ecosystem and it will be interesting to watch how both of them grow.
This is the fourth edition of StoryDrive in Beijing. What do you expect for this year’s conference? Is there any highlight in this year’s program that you particularly like or recommend?
This year’s StoryDrive has two clear foci. One is to explore the latest trends in storytelling and story selling in China, especially in film/TV adaption and online video. This is a fast growing market which is still not well-known enough to the outside world. The other focus is presenting different regions with different languages and cultural backgrounds. By presenting senior publishers and professionals from Southeast Asia and South Asia, StoryDrive will encourage information exchange and copyright transactions. I am looking forward to Mr. Wu’s keynote, I am sure it will be very interesting – and online literature is an important topic for this year’s conference.
JUERGEN BOOS(岳根 • 博思) will be speaking at the StoryDrive Conference in Beijing (29 -30 May 2016).