Leipzig book fair reports slight increase in visitors at half-time. During the first two days, 81,000 visitors were paid, spokeswoman julia lucke announced on friday. Last year, according to their figures, the figure was around 80,000.
The book fair regularly experiences its biggest rush on weekends, when people crowd the exhibition halls.
The branch meeting ends on sunday. Last year, the leipzig book fair and the associated reading festival "leipzig liest" closed with a total of 285,000 visitors.
In the book industry, bloggers, youtuber& co continues to gain influence in attracting new and young readers. "We can use these media to reach target groups that are no longer addressed by the classic feuilleton," said the team leader for online marketing at suhrkamp verlag, demian sant’unione, at a panel discussion on friday. "People who like to read and talk about it are very welcome to us."Publishers have long had their own contacts to keep in touch with the scene. At carlsen verlag, for example, which specializes in books for children and young people, three employees are exclusively responsible for this area. There are 600 to 800 active "booktubers," as they call themselves, in the file.
"We are very interested in working in the long term with bloggers who are credible in their own recommendations," says ute noth, who is responsible at carlsen for relations with social influencers.
According to the association of women booksellers, the literary world also has a sexism problem. "In any case, we have a power imbalance between men and women in the book industry," said chairwoman jana stahl to the german press agency. This is also being exploited in some cases. "It went from unwanted physical contact – meaning things like a very extended handshake, which is no longer normal, to a butt-grab – to verbal lewdness, to sexual innuendos, and to the noticing," stahl said.
The bucherfrauen are a network for women from the book trade, publishing houses, agencies and other areas of the literary business. In an internal survey of around 1,000 members of the association, around 10 percent reported experiences of sexual harassment.
Author nina george ("the lavender room") criticized the lack of representation of female authors in the media. Reviews of women’s works account for only about a quarter of all book reviews, said the 44-year-old, who is a member of the board of directors of the german writers’ association PEN-zentrum deutschland. This is a structural problem that also affects other areas of the literary world. "I once paid the literary prizes in a year. Among the 150 or so important, highly endowed prizes, authors won about five times more often than female authors."According to a spokeswoman, the association of german booksellers does not keep statistics on the gender ratio of german authors.