Frankfurt Book Fair 2022 Recap

By Kinga Jentetics

My team and I at PublishDrive have been attending as many book events as we can. Frankfurt Book Fair was the fourth one we attended this year. (And it was a blast!) As an indie author or publisher, it’s important to keep up with the ever-changing trends in publishing. Here’s my short recap of our experience and the insights we’ve received.

International Meeting Point for the Book and Media Industry

After seeing the number of participants, FBF organizers stated how the event reaffirmed the fair's position as "the most important international meeting point for the book and media industry." 

The book fair had:

  • over 4,000 exhibitors from 95 countries
  • 93,000 trade visitors
  • 87,000 private visitors
  • 6,400 media representatives
  • 104,000 users on buchmesse.de 

I’m so glad PublishDrive was there, in the hub of all things publishing.


Translate. Transfer. Transform. was the theme this year. Translation was a major focus for everyone: how to best translate and distribute content into other languages, media, genres, or contexts?

The event gathered exhibitors from different publishing branches, celebrities from culture, media, and political industries, as well as literature fans from all over the world.

FBF director Juergen Books saw the magnitude of this year’s book fair and the way it started to come alive after the pandemic: "In the midst of an oppressive global political situation, this fair sent important signals: face-to-face meetings serve as an antidote to polarisation in times of heated debate."

Talks Across Topics

FBF was an excellent catalyst for discussing the industry's current challenges and pressing global problems. 

Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, chairwoman of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, shared how the fair "was a major celebration of people's enthusiasm for books and of democracy."

Beyond publishing, there were engaging talks across topics such as the situations in Ukraine and Iran to diversity and social harmony.

Back-to-Back Meetings

Our stay there was worthwhile from another perspective: we had plenty of back-to-back meetings that kept us busy.

Among the people we've talked to, there's Sam Pinansky from J-Novel Club. He's one of our customers we've finally had the chance to meet in person. 

Find out how Sam used PublishDrive to scale his business in this case study.

We also met with A.M Elia, an Israeli author who publishes in English. She wanted to introduce her book and discuss licensing translation rights from English to other languages.

And with Anton Martynov, one of our Ukrainian publishers from Laboratory publishing house.

Happy Hours & Networking

There were a lot of productive meetings, which we're thankful for. But we also participated in several Happy Hours between all the talks. (There were four happy hours in just one day!)

This photo is from the Canadian Happy Hour, where we’ve met a lot of publishers.

After each Happy Hour, there were extra networking and exciting publishing talks.

Final Thoughts

All in all, we’re definitely attending the Frankfurt Book Fair next year too, especially since FBF will be celebrating its 75th anniversary. If you’re looking for a fantastic book event to network and gain invaluable publishing insights, this is the one to choose.