Writer Unboxed

Paris postcard 3

For writers at the source of the ‘food chain’ of publishing, daily life is often quiet and solitary, tapping away at the computer and mulling over scenes and characters, but it’s good to remember we are part of a vast and busy and lively industry which employs hundreds of thousands of people and is not quiet or solitary at all! And there’s nothing quite like a book fair to demonstrate that very forcefully to you. 

Recently I’ve been to two big book fairs: the premier event of international children’s publishing, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, and the premier French publishing event, The Salon du Livre de Paris. Two very different events but each in their own way very enjoyable and interesting, though I have to confess to finding the latter more personally satisfying, as reader and writer, for reasons I’ll outline in a moment. 

The Bologna Book Fair, in the beautiful, ancient university town of Bologna in northern Italy, is a trade fair, attended by publishers, agents, printers, editors, booksellers, authors and illustrators from all over the world. The general public does not attend, but there are some author and illustrator events. Illustrators are particularly featured there, as every year there is the Bologna Ragazzi (children’s) award which picks illustrators from across the world for a special exhibition. There’s a different judging panel every year, and the choice of works exhibited often reflects the particular taste of the panel. This year’s, I thought, was graphic in influence and often minimalistic, though there was the odd exception. Illustrators are also featured on a big wall where hopefuls can post up samples of work, hoping to catch the attention of a publisher, and they are also to be seen around the halls schlepping big portfolios as they go to meet publishers and editors. I saw queues of hopefuls with their portfolios outside various stands, each person having about five minutes to present their stuff. 

Authors have less opportunity to meet new publishers. Mostly it is by prearranged meetings with foreign editors (as happened with me) or occasionally on certain stands, such as the combined Australian publishers’ stand, there were signings, but as it’s a trade fair and people are focused on business—especially buying and selling rights—you don’t get the crowds of excited readers that you get at most book events, and the atmosphere is not the lively one you get at a writers’ festival, this is the trade showing to the trade, and fascinating enough in itself. 

What’s really interesting is the concrete display of just how big and varied the industry is (which can also have the converse effect on you as an individual writer of feeling rather small!). But also what’s fascinating is looking at how publishers from different countries focus on different things in children’s books, which is quite fascinating. For instance, the stands of Western, Southern and Northern European publishers, and also those of North American, Latin American and Australian publishers, featured a very wide variety of genres and forms—everything from baby books to non-fiction to YA novels to graphic novels and comic books (these were particularly visible on the stands of French, Italian and some US publishers) to picture books to every gradation in between, showing the flourishing and sophisticated state of children’s publishing in those countries. Some Eastern European countries—Poland, Czech Republic, the featured nation Slovakia and others showed some move towards that variety too, but by and large Eastern Europe, including Russia, seemed particularly focused on the younger age range, with picture books, baby and board books and non-fiction most often featured, and novels, especially for the older age group, rather thin on the ground. This was also the case for Asia—Japan had a big range of beautiful picture books, manga and other illustrated works, but few novels that I saw—ditto Korea–Taiwan had a few novels but mostly illustrative work—China mainly non-fiction, also for younger age groups. African publishers were represented by one stand which did include a few novels but once again many picture books. 

But though it was all really interesting, and I also appreciated meeting my foreign publishers, and I’ll always be glad I went at least once, as an outing the Salon du Livre was a much more fun experience. That’s because it is a general-public as well as trade event, and so there are hordes of readers there as well as professionals from the industry. There are lots of authors and illustrator signings, all kinds of debates, panel discussions, presentations and launches. It’s mostly French publishers strutting their stuff, though there was some foreign representation, including a big Russian stand which actually did include some young people’s novels as well as picture books and showed a wider range than what was shown in Bologna—also a lovely exhibition of Russian illustration, from the early 1900′s to modern illustrators such as Gennady Spirin (one of my own favourite illustrators!) 

Clearly, publishing is in good hands in France. There was a massive display of publishers, from tiny presses to huge conglomerates, passing from everything in between to art presses, independent publishers, regional presses, medium-size presses, one-offs—and every kind of medium, from tiny books the size of postage stamps to a beautiful old hand-print press for art books to e-books (and by the way for those who are interested, we tried out a very nice French e-book reader called the BookKeen (a bilingual play on words–’bouquine’, pronounced ‘bookeen’ means to lose yourself in books, and of course in English it works well too. Good price too and in lots of nice colours!) Literature and literary culture has always had a very high place in France but in very recent times it seems to me that publishing has opened up even more, so that as well as their traditional strengths in literary novels, detective fiction, extensive and elegant non-fiction and Bds (Bandes Dessinees, or comic book/graphic novels), there has been an explosion in publishing in the children’s/YA sector, historical novels, fantasy, chick lit, commercial novels of all sorts and even more BDs, including some French manga! There’s lots of translation going on, but also lots of homegrown French writers—in fact to me it looks like a bit of a golden age of French writing. 

It all makes the sector very exciting and flourishing; and clearly the readers are loving it, they came in their thousands and thousands to buy up books and get them signed by their favourite authors and illustrators. Queues stretched for ages and ages (one popular novelist, Amelie Nothomb, literally signed for 3 hours non-stop!), and there were people of all ages, from little kids brought by their parents, to hordes of teenagers and young people (mostly in the fantasy and BD sections, but also elsewhere) to older people, and from all walks of life. That’s because there was something for everybody, and everyone could find something to please them. There were also quite a few francophone publishers from other countries, particularly Africa—Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Congo—with very lively displays and lots of panel discussions. I listened to debates, browsed through tons of books, bought several of course, including a beautiful BD about Rasputin, which was autographed for me by the artist Vincent Pompetti with a lovely hand-drawn illustration—and thoroughly enjoyed the people-watching and the incredible buzz of being at an event where people really love books and can’t wait to get their hands on their favourites and discover new ones! And that’s where the difference in enjoyment lies I suppose—I went there both as reader and writer, and made several reading discoveries for myself—something I’d missed at the professional event that is Bologna.

Sophie Masson has published more than fifty novels internationally since 1990, mainly for children and young adults. A bilingual French and English speaker, raised mostly in Australia, she has a master’s degree in French and English literature. Her most recent novel, The Madman of Venice, was written for middle school children, grades ~6-10.

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