This business of books
MUKUND PADMANABHAN
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Random impressions on the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2006
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One wished that INDIA'S exhibitors had put in a little more thought and effort into doing up their stands.
PHOTO: AFP
Opportunities galore: The Fair means different things to different people.
ART or commerce? As a journalist at large at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which story should you be chasing? Should the focus be on the readings and discussions, which hog most of the media's attention and foster the impression that the Fair is principally a literary event? Or should attention be concentrated on the central purpose — the business of books? At the opening press conference, the Fair's Director, Juergen Boos, said he saw the Fair as a mix of "commerce, culture and socio-political aspiration". But elsewhere in his speech, he made no attempt to hide its hard commercial core. "Frankfurt is all about the economic interests of the book industry. They are the foundation that in the end sustains the Book Fair... And no other fair provides so many opportunities and chances to make contacts, to develop business ideas and do deals."
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Size matters to Frankfurt. You cannot escape hearing, in one context or another, that it is the largest book fair in the world. Never have so many publishing companies and businesses — a total of 7,272 exhibitors from 113 countries — participated in the Fair's 58-year-old history. (The origins of the Fair can be traced back, but only in a very tenuous way, to the 15th century.) This year, a carpet area of 1,72,000 square metres was sold to exhibitors, four per cent more than last year. Other such trivia is made available to those prepared to listen. For instance, 18,000 metres of electric cable were laid out, the stalls were illuminated by 13,000 light bulbs; and were the partition walls lined up in a row, they would be over 17 kilometres long. More importantly, an estimated 600 million euros worth of business deals will be closed out during the five-day event.
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If the German organisers seem obsessed with size, the Indians — Guests of Honour at this year's fair — keep harping on diversity. You keep hearing about the 24 official languages, the even greater number of dialects, the composite nature of our culture, and how ways of life co-exist across millennia. At the launch ceremony, Mahasweta Devi, the grand old lady of Indian letters who represents the country as the "main speaker", has the audience visibly moved. Choosing to strike a disarmingly personal note, her speech has resonances of Martin Luther King and Rabindranath Tagore as she stresses her right to dream and urges her country to awake. There are touches of humour too. For instance, on the subject of diversity: "A bullock cart is India just as much as the latest Toyota and Mercedes car... `Satyam Shivam Sundaram' is India. Choli ke picchey kya hai is also India. The multiplex and the mega mall is India. The snake charmer and the maharishi too are India."
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For most exhibitors and trade visitors, the main objective of being in Frankfurt is the rights and license business. But the Fair means different things to different people. For Gautum Jetley of Asian Educational Services, which specialises in printing old books that are free from copyright restrictions, the opportunity lies in finding buyers from his existing collection and securing printing contracts for other volumes. For Rajni Vij Malhotra of two publishing houses (tara press and india research press) and a literary agency (Red.Ink), the interest lies in purchasing rights and scouting for talent. As for Nabl Antoun Sader, who owns, Dar Sader, a family-owned Lebanese publishing company that goes back 143 years, Frankfurt opens up possibilities closer to home. He's met the directors of the books fairs in Cairo, Sharjah and Oman, lunched with Arabic publishers from various neighbouring countries and got a feel of the market. "Networking is hugely important. You have to keep trying. Sooner or later, something falls right into place."
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PHOTO: AFP
Much debate: The Book Search project drew crowds to the Google stall.
The choice of India as the Guest of Honour (for an unprecedented second time, the first in 1986) is invariably explained in economic terms — as a country "on the rise", as a potentially huge market. Regrettably, literary prowess is mentioned almost as an aside. Of course, it's not economics alone that determines the selection of Guests of Honour; political factors play a role too. Next year's honour goes to the region of Catalonia, a choice that needs no explanation. The year after it is going to be Turkey, which the organisers admit, was influenced by the troubles writers have faced in that country, particularly Orhan Pamuk.
With 70 invited writers, a cultural show and a Dilli Haat crafts bazaar, India makes its presence adequately felt. But one wished that the country's exhibitors had put in a little more thought and effort into doing up their stands. A few posters are pretty much all that is there by way of decoration. In contrast, Hall 8 — where the U.S. and the English publishers are on display — is a pleasure to walk through. The care that has gone into the designing of almost every stand invites you to stop... and look.
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Frankfurt is not merely about books. Ironically, these account for only 43 per cent of the products on show. Magazines and newspapers make up 8.7 per cent and stuff such as calendars, postcards and posters another 6.1 per cent. In this age of digitisation, there are a variety of CD-ROMs (8.5 per cent) and audio books (5.2 per cent). Digitisation is one of the themes of the fair. The increasing digitisation of books, which poses both threats and opportunities for the publishing industry, is the subject of many workshops. Not surprisingly, some of the debate revolves around the Google Book Search project, which has provoked lawsuits and generated accusations of copyright violations.
The extraordinary project, into which major libraries such as Oxford University and the New York Public Library have signed on, is in the process of transferring millions of books into the search engine's database. At one level, the publishing industry fears that the digitisation project may result in a loss of control over intellectual property; at another, it senses a commercial opportunity. The industry's answer is to develop an automated content access protocol as an industry standard (ACAP), a digital framework that will allow publishers to define and regulate the terms of access in a manner that a search engine's "robot spiders" understands. Interest in the book search project is evident at the crowded Google stall, where Arielle Reinstein and her colleagues patiently attempt to explain how it is a win-win situation for all concerned — publishers, booksellers, readers and, of course, her company.
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Lately, Frankfurt has made an effort to create a platform for films. The venue's cinema halls show a wide variety of films and the Fair now has its own prize for the "Best International Literary Film Adaptation" — an award that marries celluloid with print. This year's award goes to director Atom Egoyan for "Where The Truth Lies". My tight schedule doesn't allow taking in more than one film and I opt for Mira Nair's "The Namesake", an adaptation of the Jhumpa Lahiri novel. The camera work is wonderful and Tabu and Irffan Khan play the lead roles with exceptional control and clarity. Since the novel had not worked entirely for me, I expect to dislike the film, but Nair's adaptation breathes a new emotional life into Lahiri's story of migration and adjustment. The film is unabashedly sentimental but Nair is smart enough to avoid getting all syrupy. If she does attempt to tug at the heartstrings, she does so in a manner that you hardly notice. And when you do, you do not mind.
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Indian writers read and discuss their work right through the day. I hear Kiran Nagarkar talk of the importance of having a nuanced understanding of terrorism, listen to Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Rajmohan Gandhi and Amitav Ghosh discuss a range of things including secularism and national identity; and pay attention as Anushka Ravishankar and Sandhya Rao read from their books for children.
Having read and liked The Inheritance of Loss, I arrange to meet Kiran Desai. (The novel has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, which would have been awarded by the time this article appears in print.) We natter about a range of things... her novel, other writers, politics, the book fair. The conversation is effortless, she is very easy to like, and is gifted with that rare ability to put people at ease. As we say goodbye, I tell her that I hope she wins the Booker. "You know," she laughs with a disarming frankness, "I really hope I do too." I leave hoping that she does win even more.
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