Willkommen in Frankfurt #FBF12

This week, as many of you know is the Frankfurt Book Fair – one of the biggest book fairs of the year. Publishers come from all over the world to meet, discuss, and hopefully do lots of deals for foreign editions of books.

Apart from being host to the Book Fair, I found out lots of other fun facts about Frankfurt which I thought I’d share with you. Here are a few to drop into conversation:

• Frankfurt is the 5th largest city in Germany
• Frankfurt is the heart of the arts in Germany. In fact, the city spends more on the arts than any other city in Europe.
• The city, located in the heart of Germany at the river Main, has been nicknamed “Mainhattan”, as the city’s skyline resembles that of New York instead of an ancient German city.
• Frankfurt is regarded as the jazz capital of Europe. The Jazzkeller is one of Frankfurt’s most important venues for jazz music.
• A popular Frankfurt drink is apple wine. Similar to cider, the brew is known locally as Ebbelwoi (this is surely the most important fact to know if you are there…)

Anyway, four of Team Hot Key (and many more of Team Bonnier) are at the fair as we speak – Cait Davies (with the invaluable job of running the reception), Kate Manning, Sarah Odedina and Ruth Logan – and I assure you, their schedules are completely insane. There is NO TIME FOR LUNCH.

But while they are all in back to back meetings, we can enjoy a photo tour of the fair, sent from Cait and Kate, to make us feel like we are there…so here goes.

It’s held in this enormous building HERE:

Enormous Building!

It takes AGES to get anywhere:

Vast moving walkways!

It takes a while to build the stand:

In progess…

But eventually looks all clean and shiny:

Note the hoover.

It’s ready for action!

Calm before the storm.

The fair is used to highlight titles we have coming up in the future, so we pick a few to light up in big panels, here are a selection:

The Spin out in January…

Matt Whyman’s The Savages – out next June

Red Ink – out next February…

So exciting see our covers all lit up!

We will keep you all up to date with any gossip and news from the fair – how much coffee and chocolate is consumed, where the good dinners happen etc – the important stuff you need to know obviously – and if anyone is there, come by the Bonnier stand and say hello!