Frankfurt Bookfair 2010
The Taylor & Francis contingent have now returned from another successful Frankfurt Bookfair. Some were “old hands” with Graham Crossley, International Sales Director attending for the 30th time, whilst for others ( Alison Spoors ) it was their first visit.
For the first time visitor the Bookfair can be daunting; the site occupies a large area of the city centre (over 50 acres in size), ten large exhibition halls and it can take a good 20 minutes to walk from one end to another, meaning that the customary half hour appointments need to be well planned as otherwise most of the time can be eaten up by just walking from one hall to another! This year, the world’s oldest Bookfair boasted more than 7,500 exhibitors and a total of 279,325 visitors. In amongst it all the T&F crew quietly ploughed their furrow from dawn to dusk, recuperating in the evenings with colleagues and peers over a shared meal, couple of beers and publishing gossip.
All sorts of business is conducted at the Fair. For many European customers it’s a chance to see their T&F sales representative and to discuss how the year is going, but there are also many customers visiting from further afield; from Africa, the Middle East and Asia who often view the books on the stand and place significant orders there and then. It is also an active selling fair for Adele Parker, Carolina Vicente-Tordesillas and Michael Gibbons of the Foreign Rights team who together had over 180 appointments and granted over 1,000 options on our titles during the five day fair.
2010 was the 25th anniversary of Taylor & Francis attending the fair and to mark the event the Bookfair organisers presented the company with a certificate, here proudly displayed by Philip Veysey, Area Sales Manager for Southern Europe.