Bob Erdmann is a publishing consultant who handles the foreign rights to most of my books. Each year he has a stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair and he is an exhibitor who does it right. Here is his report following the recent fair:
"Although some have lamented that attendance at the Fair was down, aisles were empty and told other tales of woe, from our vantage point we were completely swamped each day, each hour. We didn’t have time to complain because we were busy with our prescheduled appointments meeting with foreign publishers and agents in our booth every minute of each day. We never have to rely on “walk up” traffic so attendance numbers aren’t really issue to us. If attendance was down we certainly offset that alleged problem with our pre-planning efforts. Prior to the Fair we asked that the foreign publishers and agents with whom we had appointments “do their homework” before our meetings. They did and came prepared to discuss specific titles with us. We met with publishers and agents from The Netherlands, Taiwan, Spain, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Romania, India, Israel, Japan, Slovenia, China, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, England, Belarus, Estonia, Denmark, Slovakia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Ukraine, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, France, Singapore, Serbia, and others."
What can we learn from Bob's experience?
- Crowded aisles were irrelevant. As with many events where exhibitors rate the value of a show by bodies in the aisle, Bob knew there would be more than enough good prospects. This is true with a lot of today's events.
- Bob took 100% responsibility for his results by setting up appointments ahead of time. As he says, "We never had to rely on 'walk up' traffic."
- He asked the publishers to 'do their homework' before meeting! How amazing is that? And very, very smart.
And finally, the biggest lesson is -- despite what the "trade shows are dead" naysayers think, exhibitions are alive and well.
