2023-04-26 17:17:10
After a three-year Corona break, the book industry is looking forward to the restart of the Leipzig Book Fair. The trade fair organizers are confident. However, not all publishers are doing well economically.
At the Leipzig Book Fair, the book industry is cautiously optimistic about the future. In the first quarter, book trade sales grew by 0.6 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year, said Peter Kraus vom Cleff, general manager of the German book trade association, in Leipzig.
However, the industry looks back on a weak year 2022 with a decline in sales of 2.1 percent. In 2021, sales were 9.63 billion euros. Due to ongoing cost pressure, the existence of small publishers is currently threatened.
The Leipzig Book Fair is being held again after a three-year Corona break. It is to be opened with a ceremony in the evening. The Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding, worth 20,000 euros, is awarded to the Russian poet Maria Stepanova. 2082 exhibitors present themselves in Leipzig by Sunday. Austria is the guest country with around 200 authors.
Book fair expects large crowds
The trade fair organizers are confident that the industry’s spring get-together can build on previous successes. “The Leipzig Book Fair does not have to be afraid to compare it to the pre-Corona period,” said Managing Director Martin Buhl-Wagner. The number of exhibitors reached 82 percent of the level of 2019. At that time, 286,000 people visited the exhibition stands and the “Leipzig reads” festival. Buhl-Wagner is now assuming 130,000 visitors. He spoke of “great omens” that this “very conservative assessment” could be reached.
For the restart after three corona-related cancellations, the popular public fair was funded by the federal government with three million euros this year. “Everything has to pay off,” said Oliver Zille, director of the book fair. “We have absolutely no doubts that in the end it will and must go without funding.”
Roth: Book Fair builds bridges
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth emphasized the importance of the book fair. “It is one of the largest and most important in all of Europe. It is the book fair that builds a bridge to Central and Eastern Europe. This is also of central importance in times of tension, in times of war in Ukraine,” said the Green politician of the German Press Agency.
The Börsenverein pays particular attention to small and medium-sized publishers, for which Leipzig has traditionally been an important trade fair location. “The small and medium-sized houses no longer have the visibility and could not be discovered so much because Leipzig did not take place for three years,” said Kraus vom Cleff. They are under “considerable economic pressure”. That is why the structural publishing funding required by the traffic light in the coalition agreement must come urgently.
In 2020, the Leipzig Book Fair was one of the first major fairs to be canceled due to the corona pandemic. It could not take place in 2021 and 2022 either. (dpa)
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