Bologna Book Plus 2022: Exhibitors, Seminars, Conferences

The Bologna Book Plus program is hosting its first in-person outing at the show this year, broadening the reach for publishers.

By Porter Anderson, Editor | @Porter_Anderson

Put some English on it

A week from today (March 14), when Bologna Children’s Book Fair opens its four-day race (March 21-24), the Bologna Pound More programme, initiated last year, will be seen in action for the first time in the field.

In a way, this year’s iteration is a reintroduction. Here is a programme, created by a team in London for Bologna, which began life in a digital format and was then widely understood as a one-day conference, although there were several other offerings as well.

Created with BolognaFiere and in coordination with the Association of Italian Publishers (Association Italiana EditoriAIE), Bologna Book Plus takes place at the world’s largest children’s book fair, yet aims to broaden the reach of the fair beyond its focus on young readers, with themed presentations on diversity and “l inclusiveness, online lending, accessibility, bookstores, the future of publishing, training and innovation.

As we take a look at the new footprint the Book Plus program is designing at the show, all times here are quoted in CET, Central European Time.

Note that Europe and the UK only switch to daylight saving time on the last Sunday in March, the 27th. So CEST, Central European Summer Time, will not have started for the progress of the Bologna Fair. (For US readers, daylight saving time began on March 13.)

Get an idea of ​​Book Plus: Think London

The Book Plus model, some of which became visible in the program’s digital intro last year, consists of three parts:

• Educational events of several hours each, paying for each
• A series of free seminars
• An exhibition space dedicated to Books Plus

Coupled with the news that Book Plus’ guest editor in Bologna is once again Jacks Thomas, former London Book Fair director this year, Book Plus will much more quickly attract the attention of global publishing professionals attending the London show (this year April 5 to 7).

In addition, she works with Orna O’Brien, formerly architect of the London seminar and conference program.

If baseball fans and snooker buddies will forgive us, we’ll say that when it comes to Bologna’s lineup, they’ve “put some English on it.”

Thomas and O’Brien are producing a series of events for Elena Pasoli’s Bologna Book Fair with distinctive echoes of London, and many professional visitors – both those focusing on children’s literature and those work in the industry at large – may well be happy to find this new star in Bologna.

Educational events/conferences

At the London Book Fair, of course, the venerable ‘Introduction to Rights’ program precedes the official start of the fair each year (this year it’s April 4). In Bologna, a conference on rights training will precede the official opening of this fair by one day.

In London, several industry-specific conference events were held during London Week, including the Research and Scholarly Publishing Forum. In Bologna you will find some such programs on the Book Plus main page (Scroll down to all the “Learn more” boxes.) These include “Call your agent: how to become a successful literary agent”, “How to self-publish in Italy and abroad” and a “Translation Rights Forum”—the latest of which is contained in the free seminar series.

In these cases of multi-hour educational events, there is a fee per event, ranging from €20 ($22 USD) for a webinar held earlier this month on poetry translation to €99 ($109 USD) for the Fair Rights pre-program, “How to sell rights and understand licensing in children’s books” on Sunday (March 20, the day before the official opening of Bologna), from 1:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. CET.

Seminars Events

The seminar program of presentations, usually 45 minutes to an hour, takes place over three of the four days of the show, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

London fans might be pleased to know that O’Brien’s seminar series isn’t as busy with rich, engaging events as it was in years of in-person iterations of the London Book Fair, when fair goers could tag their show along the way. home by the number of excellent sessions they had to miss for their meetings and other commitments.

In Bologna, the series of seminars takes place on a comfortable single track. It won’t take you out of your meetings, but it will at least mean that you don’t have to miss a good seminar because another good seminar is scheduled at the exact same time.

The seminars focus on “current topics, challenges and opportunities facing the book world as we emerge from the pandemic period.” Let’s hope they’re right about this “slack” thing. Some will have noticed The New York Times‘story of Carl Zimmer updated this morning (March 15) to something called “deltamicron” or “deltacron”. The researchers see it as “a hybrid of the omicron and delta coronavirus variants,” Zimmer writes, “appearing in several countries in Europe.”

This hybrid does not appear to pose a unique hazard as so far understood, but, as Tim Loh reports for Bloomberg this morning, “Europe has tried to leave Covid-19 behind, but the rush to lift restrictions is now paving the way for a resurgence of pandemic risks. Accelerated by the emergence of BA.2… the virus s spread rapidly. Germany has set new infection rate records for four consecutive days. Austria has also hit new highs, while cases in the Netherlands have doubled since restrictions were lifted on 25 February. “

It is therefore that taking BolognaFiere COVID Precaution Rules serious will be expected of all.

And trade visitors will find this group of seminars available, with more details on many of them here.

March 21st

• 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – The Italian book market: facts and figures
  Speaker: Piero Attanasio, AIE
• 1:15 p.m.-1:45 p.m. – Changing trends in publishing: responding to the fear of new technologies
  Speakers: Mariam Al Obaili, Emirates Publishing Association; Tamar Said, Kalimat Group; Lina Chebaro, publishing and distribution Thaqafa
• 2:00 p.m.-2:45 p.m. – The impact of Elending on shopping habits in Europe
  Speaker: Ricardo Franco Levi, President of the Association of Italian Publishers and Vice-President of the Federation of European Publishers
• 15.00-15.45 – Steven Guaranaccia In conversation with Mimaster
• 16.00-17.00 – Take stock: where is the global publishing?
  Speakers: Bodour Al Qasimi, President of the International Publishers Association (IPA), Alison Tweed, Book Aid International; Jose Manuel Anta, International Publishing Distribution Center; Karine Pansa, Girassol Brasil Edicoes Ltda
• 5:00 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. – What works and what doesn’t in innovation training for book professionals
  Speakers: Ruediger Wischenbart; Luis Gonzalez German Sanchez Ruiperez Foundation; Rūta Elijošaitytė-Kaikarė, Lithuanian Association of Publishers; Miha Kovac, University of Ljubljana

March 22

• 12h00-12h30 – Critical mind: The role of the critic in the promotion of books
  Speakers: Leonard S. Marcus and novelist and critic Michele Roberts
• 1:15 p.m.-1:45 p.m. – Understanding the new look European Prize for Literature
  Speaker: Julie Belgrado, European Federation of Booksellers
• 2:00 p.m.-2:45 p.m.– Let’s be accessible
  Speakers: Cristina Mussinelli, LIA Foundation; Filippo Floridia, Mondadori; Marta Fornasero D Scuola; Elisa Molinari; LIA Foundation
• 3:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. – Living with books, living with Covid: how European booksellers are coping with change

March 23

• 10.00-11.00 – Translation forum: Nations Unite, what sells well, where
  Speakers: Viviana Vuscovic, Editorial Group Mauri Spagnol; Leonella Basiglini, Europa Editions; Nopi Chatzigeorgiou, Hellenic Cultural Foundation; Emma House, Oreham Group
• 11:00 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. – Translation forum: hot topics on translation rights
  Speakers: Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, translator; Lawrence Schimel, author and anthropologist; Inara Belin Kaja, Janis Roze bookstore, Latvia, Alise Nigale, Liels un Mazs; Fernanda Dantas, Brazilian Book Chamber, Emma House, Oreham Group.
• 13.00 – 13.45 – Accessible books to give everyone the opportunity to read.
  Speakers: Sophie Hamon, MOBiDys; Daniela Marchitto, Free Words Edzioni; Gabriele Cordovani, Italian Dyslexia Association; Paolo Albert, PubCoder.
• 14:00-14:45 Supply Chain and Sustainability: How are publishers, printers and technology providers working together to improve supply chain sustainability?

Book Plus exhibitors

This final section of Book Plus’ presence this year is a dedicated exhibition space in Hall 29, with 33 exhibitors from markets as far apart as Australia, Mexico, India, Ireland, Poland, Myanmar, Kenya, Morocco, Lebanon and Turkey. , the United States, the Ivory Coast, Qatar, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Algeria, Syria and Jordan.

To view them, go to Book Plus main pagescroll down and look for the “BBPlus Directory” box.

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To find out more about the Bologna Children’s Book Fair click here, to find out more about children’s books, and to find out more about world publishing fairs and book fairs, click here. More information about the Association of Italian Publishers here, more about Italy and its book publishing industry here.

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