Being FBF’s featured market provides exposure but it is a sizeable investment was the tag line on Roger Tagholm’s story for The Bookseller daily at Frankfurt. The journalist interviewed Kevin Chapman and Iceland’s Halldor Gudmundsson about their countries’ respective Guest of Honour campaigns.
“When New Zealand swept into the Frankfurt Book Fair as Guest of Honour in 2012 with its haka, its musicians, its dancers, some 50 publishers, 80 authors and a pavilion whose dark, magical, starlight-and-water installation took people’s breath away, the excitement and sense of discovery was palpable.
This was FBF’s Guest of Honour programme at its very best…” wrote Tagholm.
Interviewing Kevin Chapman, he asked about anything tangible in a business sense that was achieved.
Chapman listed the positives: smashing the target to get 100 titles translated into German, cultural programme acts being invited back to Europe, Food and Wine set targets they achieved and a change in the way Germans saw New Zealand culture and a subsequent rise in tourism. Read the full article here.
