“The German book sector is currently in a comfortable growth phase,” says Gottfried Honnefelder, chairman of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels: for the fourth time in succession, the book market registered a clear increase in turnover in 2007, at 9.6 billion euro. In Germany there are more than 2,000 literary publishers – including about 200 large and small publishers who are involved in the international licence trade. More than 4,400 bookshops throughout the country ensure that the products reach the reader. What is more, the online book trade also has strong growth figures: in 2007 the internet turnover with books in Germany jumped 20% to about 850 million euros, which corresponds to a turnover percentage of the book market of about 9%.
Promoter of the Publishing Houses and Bookshops
The Book Fair in Frankfurt is organized by the Ausstellungs- und Messe GmbH, a subsidiary of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandel. The Börsenverein was founded in 1825 in Leipzig and today is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main. It has an unusual structure: it is the only association worldwide that unites all the trading stages in the book sector under one roof. About 6,000 publishers, bookshops, book distributors and wholesalers, second-hand bookshops and publishers’ representatives are members. Each year, the Börsenverein awards one of the most important German cultural prizes, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and, since 2005, the German Book Prize awarded for the best German-language novel. Every week its magazine “Börsenblatt” informs the book trade in Germany.
