Frankfurt Book Fair by Wesley Lynch | 09 January 2012 | 0 Comments
The Frankfurt Book Fair, otherwise known as the Frankfurter Buchmesse, dates all the way back to the 15th century. The fair began soon after Johannes Gutenberg had invented printing in movable letters. It is the world’s largest trade fair for books; this is based on the ratio between the number of attendees vs. the publishing companies who take part. It is considered to be the most significant marketplace for books, media, rights and licences worldwide. Every year 7, 400 exhibitors from 106 different countries attend with a further 280, 194 visitors and 10, 000 journalists.
We decided this would be the perfect venue to launch Snapplify. “Snapplify is committed to offering a simple service to authors and publishers, giving them a full turnkey solution that transforms PDFs to Mobile Apps instantly. We take PDFs and convert these exact files into digital publications which are then placed in a company branded Mobile App which is free to download from the App Store. You can place multiple publications within a single App making it a perfect tool for magazines, newspapers and books.” It was incredible to see and experience the demand the international market had for a mobile tool such as Snapplify. We met new publishers and organisations and secured and closed multiple new accounts before the fair ended.
Alon Lichtenstein from Snapplify and Arthur Attwell from Paperight attended the fair with me. “Paperight lets you sell instant, effortless print licences to businesses anywhere – from copy shops to colleges. They buy licences and get watermarked PDFs for printing at paperight.com. Their customers pay your licence fee and the outlet’s printing charge.”
The scale of the event really impressed me and it was great to meet leading publishers that are dominating the industry at the moment. I was also glad to see a few South Africans as well. I bumped into another local start-up, Cognician, who later approached me to deliver a short presentation on their company. I am usually used to this kind of pressure but when the Oxford University Press began firing heavy questions my way, it did feel a bit scary.
It was incredible to see the passion that so many people had for books as well as book characters. A local and humorous tradition is for the attendees to get dressed up as their favourite book or game character. So you will be rest assured to see an abundance of Harry Potters walking around. This provides ample entertainment for those spending vast amounts of time walking between different exhibition halls.
The Frankfurt Book Fair is definitely the perfect place to secure leading international contacts from countries including Latin America and Asia. I look forward to attending the fair once again this year and securing more contacts.
Houghton Stands
Children story book publisher
Tech Stands
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