As Frankfurt drew to a close last weekend, PANZ News emailed the publishers on the New Zealand stand as asked for feedback. Here are their candid, mostly brief, reports:

Julia Marshall, Gecko Press:

We are now on the last day of the fair and I am kind of exhausted which is as it should be. It has been good! Solid and steady is the report from the rights agents I meet and my own rights agent says the same.

My most fun meeting was bumping into one of the German illustrators we publish on the train on the way home at 1.30 in the morning (after being at the Frankfurter Hof with Sam Elworthy and he had some news that will change the line-up for our next year’s books!

Tracy Strudley, Global Education Systems:

Frankfurt still proves to be the leading book fair where new business opportunities are started. GES managed in excess of 20 solid appointments, with new business opportunities presenting themselves in Chile and Brazil.

We confirmed new product with existing distributors and partners and increased focus and interest in Marie Clay’s Professional Development titles.

The New Zealand stand continues to look smart and professional with its current design and branding. Sarah Ropata and her husband Ropes did a fine job! All the NZ publishers really appreciate their focus and passion for our country brand and our content.

Without a doubt the highlight for me was being presented with the German edition of our book Dealing Daily with Dementia. I met the publisher through a chance recommendation at last year’s fair and one year later the book is in my hand. You cannot match the thrill and satisfaction of that moment. The German publishers are delighted with the exceptional endorsements for the book they have received before publication in their market.

Frankfurt is also about making new contacts, so I was also pleased to be invited to the Russian publishers party held at the Frankfurter Hof, a beautiful nineteenth century hotel in the heart of the city. The lavish hospitality and networking was just amazing.

New to me was the emergence of Google Analytics in a publisher’s assessment process for a project or an author, especially among the Americans. They want authors with established online platforms. But I was struck by the number of new business models that are emerging in the current environment. The models have probably always been there, but there’s a greater openness to trying new things and being creative about how to work cooperatively together.

The channels to market have definitely become more challenging, but quality books will always find their readers.

I think I had a very good fair. The hall was slightly quiet but the appointments were high quality, and while it takes a fair time to know how many leads will eventuate, it feels very good at the moment.

Karen McKenzie, Little Green Frog Publishing:

Author Dr Libby met with 30 publishers from around the world on the company’s very first visit to Frankfurt. They now have significant interest from publishers in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Iceland and Taiwan.

In most cases there is interest from multiple publishers in these various markets, so I will be following up from now on to determine the best fit for Dr Libby in each market. Dr Libby was thrilled with the positive response.

This was my first Frankfurt and I was very apprehensive. I found the first day or so completely overwhelming but eventually I found my way and started enjoying myself. Some very useful meetings, chance encounters, and even a handful of good prospects. At the beginning I wanted to run away; by the end I was sad it was over!

Fantastic support for this newbie from all the veterans on the NZ stand. Sore feet, but!

I thought Frankfurt 2014 was enormously energising. A little shrinkage in Hall 8 and all of us will be off to Hall 6 next year, closer to the French and Italians which is a good thing. The Finns were country of honour (Finland. Cool) but many said that New Zealand was cooler. Actually, only one person said that, to the media, it was me, diplomatic incident.* Lively stand, one of my busiest fairs with a handshake sale for our anthology of Maori poetry Puna Wai Korero; a bidding fight lining up for Helen Sword’s Writers Diet and Birds of the Pacific, and lots more.

*Interviewed by Publishing Perspectives at the Fair and published in their daily bulletin here.

The fair kept me pretty busy, but the aisles were noticeably less busy than in previous years. Which gave me a bit more time than usual to talk with people and do follow-ups. We celebrated the launch of our co-edition of Christopher Pugsley’s revised Gallipoli with Frontline Books, and a promising start to our North American distribution with International Publishers Marketing.

‘Difficult’ is the most commonly used adjective for book markets everywhere; you need to be playing the long game.

The stand was well attended this year, and our people all reported good solid meetings. The floor seemed quieter in terms of foot-flow but that said, the walk up traffic seemed more focused and serious. New Zealand is still enjoying excellent PR off the back of Guest of Honour year, with a great centre page piece all about our presence setting a bench mark in one of the Fair Dailies. The big talk in Hall 8 was of the impending move to Hall 6 next year – which is being greeted with support from most. We will report back on that as the plans become clearer to us.

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.

Developments in digital technology are helping to change this for some VIP readers and Copyright Licensing (CLNZ) has been working with the Royal NZ Foundation of the Blind (RNZFB) for the past two years on a project known as TIGAR* that is also a step in the right direction towards improving access. However the most recent and brightest news in the provision of access to published works for VIPs came in June this year when a new World Intellectual Property Office Treaty was agreed in Marrakesh. This quickly became known as the Marrakesh Treaty and is an agreement between the member states of WIPO that each country will implement the requirements of the Treaty into its legislative framework.
 
There’s lots of tedious international treaty and law specifics I could go into at this point, but that’s not what you want to, or need to, know. What you need to know is “what does this mean to me as a publisher?” Given that New Zealand already has a copyright exception for the creation of accessible format copies of copyright works for VIPs (in Section 69 of the Copyright Act), we’re already well down the track towards complying with the terms of the Treaty. Our current Copyright Act however doesn’t define the position on importing and exporting accessible copies and this may need to be changed.
 
Importing and exporting accessible files is what’s happening in the TIGAR project, but that’s with a signed agreement between WIPO, RNZFB and CLNZ and with title-by-title clearance by publishers.
 
So what does happen in New Zealand at the moment? RNZFB provides an invaluable service for its members in creating and distributing accessible copies of books and other text-based materials. A large number of these are produced as narrated audio – an audio file where someone with a voice that’s easy to listen to reads the entire book out loud and this is recorded into a digital format. These files are copied to a CD and distributed to RNZFB members by the team in the RNZFB library in Parnell, Auckland. Each member can receive a number of books at a time and, on returning the CD, access more files/books for their reading pleasure – just like any other library service. This work is funded by donations the RNZFB receives each year.
 
When it comes to education texts RNZFB has other formats and means by which it distributes content. Some of these are made possible by the publisher being able to provide a digital file to assist with the creation of the required format. Others are created from a hard copy of the text.

Section 69 of the Copyright Act includes a condition that an accessible copy can only be made if a book is not already commercially available in the format in which the VIP needs it. Where the required format is braille, it is unlikely that the publisher will have that format available. But if the required format is audio or large print then, in the world of digital formats, the publisher may already have the book commercially available in that format. For example, the company Read How You Want provides commercial editions in large print, braille and daisy editions for some publishers.
 
As a publisher, you may be contacted by someone at RNZFB to ask for a file or in regard to permission for a particular work. The information above is provided as a short story (with all the important bits) on how Section 69 works in practice between publishers and the RNZFB. If you need to know more about the workings of this particular area of copyright, please contact me –  paula@copyright.co.nz
 
*TIGAR stands for Trusted Intermediary Global Accessible Resources. Launched in November 2010 by the WIPO Stakeholders’ Platform, TIGAR is a three-year pilot project that seeks to facilitate cross-border transfer of copyrighted works in accessible formats among various national institutions or Trusted Intermediaries (TIs), notably national libraries serving those with print disabilities.

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