This week, the publishing world is buzzing with excitement about the
Frankfurt Book Fair, where deals are made, the latest trends are analysed and publishers hope to fill their address books with useful and interesting contacts.
P-Wave Press aren't there this year (perhaps in 2025), but we have been soaking up all the news and gossip emanating from the key business event in the world of books. The official website states that they are expecting to welcome 215,000 onsite attendees from up to 130 countries, roughly evenly divided between the publishing trade and the general public, alongside 4000 exhibitors. It is hardly surprising that this five-day event is heralded as the world's largest trade fair for books.
We may not be at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2024, but I personally have been, back in 2011, and even then I was blown away by the sheer scale of the event.
I was invited by an old friend, who ran a bookshop in Oxford at the time. He knew I was taking some time out from life in Munich, and he thought it would be fun for us to spend a few days together flogging books in the daytime and having dinner and a few drinks in the evening.
What he didn't realise was that I had quite a bit of experience selling to the public, as I had spent a happy couple of years after graduating from university in 1996 on the shop floor of the
Jaeger flagship store on Regent Street, in London's West End. They are no longer there, and the brand is now owned by Marks and Spencer, but at the time they occupied the upper reaches of that treacherous middle-ground in UK fashion retailing.
I initially sold tailoring in the menswear department, first during the Christmas holidays and then as a full-time employee when nothing better came along and I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life. The management team decided (to my relief) that, while there wasn't a permanent place for me in the basement of the Regent Street shop in between the suits and casual wear, they did have a use for me going from store to store, wherever I was needed and in whichever department, with often no more than 24 hours' notice.
Consequently, I sold all manner of men's and women's clothes all over South East England, most often in the Knightsbridge menswear shop. There I encountered a bunch of well-heeled reprobates and was educated in making the move from callow post-student youth to young man about town. Moreover, the result of all these peripatetic roles in a multitude of outlets was that I received a thorough grounding in face-to-face sales techniques.
Fast-forward more than 10 years, and I was delighted to get back into the fray at the home of the European Central Bank and test whether I still had the ability to sell coals to Newcastle, as it were, if only for two or three days.
It was my first visit to Frankfurt, which as a city contrasted sharply with Munich, but my abiding memory is the first time I stepped into the
Messe Frankfurt. It is on a completely different scale from the conference centres I had seen in the past.
There was no time for idling, however. My friend took me straight over to his stall and set me to work, telling me that he had missed the first day due various complications over deliveries, and now we had one day less than planned to reach his target of selling several thousand Euros' worth of books before the Fair closed.
He seemed a little sceptical when I told him not to worry as the target was more than achievable, but he didn't have time to think about it any further, as he had a plethora of meetings to attend.
And so over the next few days I launched myself into selling as many of his books as humanly possible, trying to ensure that no one who entered my orbit left without at least one tome in their hand. I did such a good job that I easily exceeded his target, and we celebrated in style on the last evening, wining and dining into the small hours. But the real joy for me was the opportunity that retails affords to connect to people and, in this case, put a book into their hands that will hopefully give them a great deal of pleasure.
So many years have passed and my life has changed utterly since then, but part of me would like to return to those carefree days. Maybe next year…