The Frankfurt Book Fair is an international meeting place for publishers, booksellers, agents, film producers or authors. Each year in October, we all come together and create something new. It is the most important marketplace for books, media, rights and licences worldwide. More than 7,300 exhibitors from 100 countries, 300,000 visitors and over 10,000 journalists. Pontas was there again for the 20th time (never missed a “Frankfurt” since 1992!), building bridges between books and publishers, texts and screens. This year Anna Soler-Pont, Carina Brandt, Elisa Basolu, Patricia Sánchez and Anna Ascolies attended meetings with publishers and film producers from all around the world during seven days. Pontas had a table at the Agent’s Center and another at the StoryDrive Business Center, a new place for the crossmedia rights.
Among the deals we have closed the days before the fair, when publishers and agents get together all over the city, we are happy to announce that The Last of the Sami , the novel by French author Olivier Trucwill be published by Éditions Métailié in France, Marsilio in Italy and Destino in Spain. During the book fair, one of the “hot titles” was The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo Meira: a Spanish thriller acquired in Frankfurt by Destino and of which we hope to sell translation and film rights very soon, according to the huge enthusiasm showed by scouts and international editors who had read a few pages even in the Blackberry screens (when they worked!).
In the photos below : Carina Brandt during a meeting; Italian editor Cristina Prasso from Nord (Italian editor of Eric Frattini and Susana Fortes, among others) with Elisa Basolu.
Brazilian author Carola Saavedra was invited to participate in a panel and she had the chance to talk about her most recent novel, Landscape with Dromedary. Brazil will be Guest of Honour at Frankfurt Book Fair 2013 and many events were taking place already to promote Brazilian literature among German readers. Here below, Carola Saavedra in a dialogue with Michael Kegler (in a photo by Peter W. Schulze) and crossing the fair grounds with Anna Ascolies.
Fabio Muzi (Susan Abulhawa ’s italian editor at Feltrinelli), the scout Virginia Marx and Patricia Sánchez ; the scout Aurelio Major, Nelleke Geel (Dutch editor of Lluís-Anton Baulenas, among other Pontas authors) and our colleague Anne Edelstein, agent in New York.
French publisher Anne Marie Métailié; and Anna Soler-Pont and Chris Goldberg, director of literary affairs at 20th Century Fox, always searching for books to become films (his database includes more than 40.000 titles with adaptation potential!).
