Angels Are Tomorrow’s Vampires – Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2010
This March a group of 12 Oxford Brookes publishing students went to visit the 47th Children’s Book Fair in Bologna. A beautiful book fair, many interesting dialogues and a very pleasant visit to an Italian publishing house were awaiting the students, not to mention the charming city of Bologna, the Italian cuisine and warm temperatures.
Our Senior Lecturer, Beverley Tarquini, provided us with the perfect ‘survival package’, including maps and information about ‘the best pizza place in town’, where we all met on the Wednesday evening and got into the right mood for the book fair.
At this year’s fair there were about 1,300 exhibitors from 67 countries to be seen and many interesting people to meet. Appointments were made for us with Lion Hudson’s international sales manager, Robert Seath, the former Brookes student, Rita Davis from the German publishing house Coppenrath, Elisabeth Wright, Rights Director from Usborne Publishing, Anne-Marie Hansen, Head of Children’s Rights at OUP, and David Salariya from Salariya books. Julia Eccleshare, children’s books editor from the Guardian, also gave some fascinating insights on what ‘the next big thing’ might be in children’s publishing. All of us will now keep an eye on whether angels are going to expel vampires when it comes to young adults’ interests.
An absolute highlight of our visit to Bologna was a trip to the publishing house Zanichelli Editore, where the publisher Greta Ceratti and her team gave us a warm welcome and an amazing insight into the development of educational publishing in Italy. The trip to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is definitely worth while, no matter whether one is interested in rights, children’s publishing or publishing in general.
News Item submitted by: Susanne Bez, European Master in Publishing
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04 May 2010 around 12pm
Filed Under #Publishing | #European Publishing