Author Archives: Elisabeth Watson

All Dressed Up with No Place to Go: The Renaissance of Argentinian Publishers VS. Global Isolationism

From April 25 to May 19, the Buenos Aires Book Fair will be welcoming readers and Spanish-language publishing professionals around the world, seeking, says the Fair’s Executive Director, Gabriela Adamo, “to reassure Argentina’s place as a leading country in the Spanish book industry.” Like every other part of the Spanish-language book industry, Argentina is feeling…Continue Reading

Little Engines That Could: Children’s Publishers in Europe’s Smaller Markets

In anticipation of the Bologna International Book Fair, there’s no shortage of buzz about the fast-emerging kids’ markets in Asia, Latin America, and the Arab world, along with curiosity about how the traditional powerhouses of France, Spain, and Germany are faring. Falling somewhere in between, the smaller European territories are feeling the benefit of Asian…Continue Reading

The Jerusalem Book Fair’s Midlife Crisis: Taking Stock at 50

In the fiftieth year since its founding, the 26th biannual Jerusalem International Book Fair (JIBF) hosted 5 days of exhibits, panels, and literary events from February 10-February 15, 2013. More than 400 publishers from 30 countries exhibited, and the visitor head-count for the week exceeded 45,000. Amid jubilee celebration, though, a growing contingent of long-time participants…Continue Reading

New Tools, Old Trade: Digital Publishing at the 2013 College Art Association Trade Show

The College Art Association’s 101st Annual Conference (held this year in New York, from February 13-16 at the New York Hilton) is primarily a spot for grad students seeking for jobs in the academic art world; professional symposia; and panels on such popular topics as “Eschatology in Art Historiography.” Tucked amongst all this heavy-hitting scholarship,…Continue Reading

The Cairo Book Fair 2013: Traditional Business in a Revolutionary World

The 44th Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF), scheduled to run January 23-February 5, 2013, is the second held since the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, but the first since the election of President Mohamed Morsi and his cabinet. More specifically, the Fair’s coincidence with the January 25th anniversary of the Revolution inevitably ties it to questions about…Continue Reading

Sales Across Borders: International Ebook Sales at DBW 2013

The Digital Book World 2013 panels, “Sales Across Borders: Export” and “Sales Across Borders: Import” (back to back on Wednesday afternoon) were both concerned with the question of what new digital systems best allow books to travel across international boundaries—though their approaches were hardly two sides of one coin. On the Export panel, there was…Continue Reading

Small Language Publishing in 2012

As we took stock of 2012’s publishing milestones and discussed what 2013 held in store, we thought it would be an ideal time to get a global view of what the year was like for publishing in “smaller” languages—for our purposes here, those languages spoken by fewer than 100 million native speakers worldwide. Publishing Trends…Continue Reading

International Publishers Talk Turkey at the Istanbul Book Fair

Beginning this year on Saturday, November 17th and lasting the following week, through Sunday, November 25th, The Tüyap Istanbul Book Fair is incontestably Turkey’s largest book business event—it boasted over 500,000 visitors this year, and more than 500 registered Turkish publishers, agencies, and organizations. Now in its 31st year, the Fair is a production of…Continue Reading

New Zealand Cookbooks: Coming of Age by Staying Close to Home

A glance over the list of nonfiction authors who traveled from New Zealand to Frankfurt in celebration of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s Guest of Honor reveals a decidedly gourmet bent: of the 18 authors listed, eight are food or wine writers–almost 45%. This skew toward one particular category, says Kevin Chapman, MD of Hachette New…Continue Reading

Publishers Offering Creative Writing Classes, in the UK and Beyond

In a world where “content and form can be easily separated, writers…are nothing short of desperate to understand the change that technology has forced upon traditional publishing,” writes Jason Allen Ashlock, President of Movable Type Management, in a recent Digital Book World post. In the interest of authors being better informed, some publishers are getting…Continue Reading