Spring is book fair time, with two of the world’s largest and most influential fairs happening virtually back-to-back. Bologna is a specialised children’s books fair, while London is more of an all-rounder beast, encompassing everything print and digital in the world of literature.

Among my book fair rituals is the first-day roundup of the mood of the fair on the internal news-paper. The big fairs publish daily newspaper versions of some of the largest trade magazines, distributed throughout the fairs and which help keep the buzz going. And, unfailingly, the paper reports:

“A newly-energised and positive mood among publishers and agents following years of quiet (yes, this is reported every year).

“A healthy frenzy of pre-emptive rights deals. Basically, fairs are about acquiring and selling rights to manuscripts. And while most of the negotiating is of the humdrum variety, the headline-grabbers are, of course, the six- and seven-figure deals, a result of hotly contested auctions.

Talk of the definition of publishing changing. Last edition of the Frankfurt fair, it was “whether Twitter counts as a book publisher”.

This Bologna edition it was all about a return to print books (already?) after a quasi-decade of ebook dominance.

“Offline is the new online,” said Venera Pausder, CEO of German app creator Fox and Sheep. And, by offline, she was not referring to offline apps, but to the good old offline world, as in physical bookstores, print books and the backing up of apps with a physical presence.

And yes, publishing is changing. Again. It is one of the industries that on the one hand is most un-changed, with traditions going back decades, while on the other hand exposed to constant change both technological and content-related. After all, books are built on, and influenced by, what is going in the world around us. This year’s London Book Fair you couldn’t turn a corner without en-countering the umpteenth ISIS-analysis tome (watch out for the harrowing memoir The Raqqa Diaries: Life Inside the Islamic State), a Brexit pitch or Donald Trump parody book.

Book fairs have changed massively over the past 10 years. They now reflect, more than ever, the increasing internationality of publishing, where an Anglophone publisher might have more in common with his Chinese and Korean partners than with a fellow Anglophone. But fairs have also had to contend with decreased footfall: visitors to the Frankfurt Book Fair are down – 2014’s figures were the lowest in seven years. Exhibitors at the world’s largest book fair have fallen 5.8 per cent from 2010 and, what increase there, is comes not from Anglophone or Western publishers but mostly from Southeast Asia.

The talk of the latest book fairs has been the surge of print book sales in 2015

The talk of the latest book fairs has been the surge of print book sales in 2015. The UK recorded its first year-on-year rise in physical book sales since 2007. Media-led frenzies are, of course, largely responsible for the surges. So, for example, we see the absolute dominance of E L James’ Grey and Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. In the UK alone, Grey sold over one million copies. And The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins, has been the breakout smash of 2015, selling 350,000 copies and counting. Grip-lit – as the trend initiated by Gone Girl, and followed up by The Girl on the Train and many others, is called – shows no sign of slowing down.

In the US, Go Set a Watchman was the top-selling title of 2015 (well over 1.5 million copies) followed by Grey and The Girl on the Train (both over one million copies each).

This swing-back to print books is reflected also in the children’s book market. Bologna Book Fair brought with it news that, for the first time in many years, the children’s printed book industry in the UK actually grew 9 per cent over the previous year in 2014. And it increased further in 2015. David Walliams’s titles (shifting over 1,600,000 copies in total, in the UK only, that is excluding the US and translations), together with Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid books, completely dominate the charts. Wimpy Kid topped the 2015 charts in Italy too (followed by de Saint-Exupery’s evergreen “The Little Prince” in Italian translation).

Book fairs are also great for sussing out the waxing and waning of trends: mindfulness adult-colouring books continue, but start to dip, morphing in some cases to similar-concept dot-to-dot books.

Other trends include John Green’s success with The Fault in our Stars, which has emboldened many knock-off titles; medical graphic novels; same-sex relationship young adult titles; mysteries/crime still going strong, especially if in an unusual setting (in space, in Victorian times, in the Far West), and space is making a comeback (perhaps on the coattails of the success of Michel Faber’s Book of Strange New Things). Also in Bologna and London, the superhero trend has returned to children’s books and a few titles are blending Westerns with sci-fi.

One of my favourite forthcoming titles has to be a children’s murder mystery (I Have No Secrets, by Penny Joelson) about teenage narrator with a disability who knows the identity of the killer – but cannot communicate it to the outside world due to his disability. Also interesting, and a high-profile title in London, should be Feed, a thriller set in a near-future world where our brains have an embedded social media feed.

And, of course, I cannot not mention Malta’s very visible presence this year at the London Book Fair. A stand and events run by the Malta Book Council, and the wonderful Antonella Axisa holding court at the Book Fair Globe Theatre, reading Shakepeare in Maltese and Maltese poetry with Keith Borg.

One of those tiring ‘going-round-in-circles’ debates that’s been happening for the past decade, is whether physical book fairs are redundant in the age of e-mail and Skype. And yes, the raison d’etre for fairs has changed. I’m old enough (just!) to remember the time when the fairs where the only times in a year when you’d speak to your business contacts.

Nowadays, of course, conversation is ongoing. But what hasn’t changed and what technology has not found a substitute for, is the fair as a throbbing heart of the industry, as the irreplaceable venue for keeping up to date with what’s going on, where literature is going… and of course the after-fair drinks parties.

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