Continued...
But, of course,
one is too busy selling Rights to do any of these things. Or are we?
What is this Fair really about?
It gradually dawned on me that the Fair is about
selling Rights. That may seem obvious but what on earth are we doing,
thousands of us on our partitioned stands in the middle of Europe, at
a cost which may never be recovered in terms of any successful business
deal?
It was the
Americans, after World War II, who decided that the wrecked city of Frankfurt
should be a conference centre, to pump up the desperate economy. And
ever since, we have dutifully presented ourselves, perhaps only because
if we don’t, the assumption will be that we have gone under or
gone past our sell by date. There are plenty of the latter, including
me: listen out for the squeak of rubber knickers down the aisles and
you can see the old hands, and old feet, of those who think they will
have one last Frankfurt before their manuscripts turn up.
I’ve often thought that the wrong people go to the Fair – or
at least the right people are not always there. There are plenty of Chief
Execs who fly in, make the noises, raise the glasses, and fly out at the
drop of the last handshake. But there are so many hopefuls, too, freelances
who want to show you their designs, authors with the Great Idea, printers
looking for orders from people who never buy print. They’re offended
at the brush off, without giving a thought to why you are there. They come
to the Fair because they think it’s a forum for publishing as an
entire entity.I’ve often thought that the wrong people go to the
Fair – or at least the right people are not always there.
But it’s not. We are there to flog, not to be flogged to. You can
see it in the guarded looks of those who make appointments on the stands – the
icy smile as their antennae sense you want to sell, not to buy. It’s
there in the deals that are announced in triumph, the zillion-dollar
contract that justifies the expensive presence.
But can it really be true that you
have to go and sit on hired furniture surrounded by clapboard to clinch
a deal? Isn’t it possible, particularly
with the Web, to do electronically what we do physically at Frankfurt?
If that Big Deal is to be made, and the personal touch is needed, why
wait until Frankfurt?
And isn’t there an element missing when the contract is being
negotiated? Why, that old production department, of course! That contract,
to be financially worthwhile, must assume that the costs work, the schedule
is possible and the technology is in place. Without that knowledge, the
deal can turn sour, lose money, and simply not be possible.
So often, the production
manager back home has to haul the nuts out of the fire. So when did you
last meet someone from production at the Fair? Only when dealing with
the smaller publisher, who can’t afford to risk putting
his nuts into the fire and is experienced in all aspects of publishing
including production.
There, I’ve waved the flag for the production department. But I don’t
underestimate the effort needed to sell rights, the sharpened judgment that
picks out the worthwhile from the timewaster, the nose for the project that
won’t work. Once, when packaging was still a Big Thing in the 80s,
a group of us held a competition to see who got the most rejections in the
shortest amount of time. Tony Littlechild, my business partner, won with
ten projects rejected in less than a minute by USA’s Crown Publishing.
Around five seconds a ‘nope’.
Tough world, publishing. A bit daft,
too.
Colin Walsh