As a Frankfurt BookFair Business Club 2017 Ambassador I had the opportunity to work with the Fair organisers on creating unique experiences for some important visitors in Frankfurt this year. I was the only African representative.
In the Business Club, I found many of the discussions applicable as learning experiences for the South African Book industry.
Kallimat’s Approach to international business, for example, is interesting. Kalimat has come up with an ingenious way to get their best Arabic literature translated into many other languages and disseminated across many other territories. The key is a partnership format in which Kalimat exchanges titles for translation with other major global publishers. This process guarantees not only translations but also sales – every publishing house uses its own channels to promote work from the UAE in its own market, and Kalimat in turn then sells that publisher’s books in the Arab world.
Kallimat has created partnerships with big foreign publishers like Bloomsbury and others to license popular characters and rights to localise content. This not only creates new industries and fields of work for employment but is a soft diplomacy when our children can understand each other beyond the barriers of language.
A round table with His Excellency, Nigeria’s Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar was full of debate as the German representatives were quite insistent that translations were important where as student delegates felt that translations change the messages authors wish to convey.
The Ambassador proposed a middle ground that would draw more German investment to Nigeria by means of inter-cultural exchanges and pointed out that the marketing had to go beyond foreign-educated African writers publishing abroad. Dr Nnedi Okorafor, the Science Fiction writer was used as an example of how authors are marketed at the Book Fair in German translation
France was the guest of honor, which saw Merkl and Macron open the Fair with thoughts on books as a uniting factor in the world, which is always a promising thought.
It was apparent that Brazil and Latin America are primed for major growth in the book industry. I hung out with the Brazillians after hours and at the annual BookWIRE digital awards night. Colorful caipirinhas at the Brazil stand are now a firm fixture after a long day of negotiating with Publishers.
The weather got better during the week and Saturday was glorious sunshine and light bringing all the school children dressed up as their favourite book characters in some extreme costume play. Dan Brown gave a private reading on the Saturday evening that was very well attended.
Functioning almost as a show-within-a-show, the second annual The Arts+ program at Frankfurt focused, in particular, on robotics and virtual reality within the creative industries.
In addition to 54 exhibitors in The Arts+ area, some 120 speakers from nearly 20 nations were heard on two stages. Their topics addressed aspects of cultural and technological connection, correlation, and sometimes collision.
There were some really interesting interpretations of what happens when you combine big data, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in book related applications.
Facial recognition software attached to cameras in bookshop windows can for example allow a bookseller insight to customers as they approach their bookstore. Using big data, software can tell certain characteristics about the Customer in order for the bookseller to better serve them. It has a pretty good guestimate of demographic segmentation and then determines likely purchasing behaviour. When I stood in front of it, it got my age right and what kind of mood/disposition I was likely to be in.
In academic applications, VR can be used for a myriad lessons from showing the interior of the Egyptian tombs to giving students insight to the human vascular system from a blood cell’s point of view. It is incredibly illustrative. Some difficult mathematical models, three dimensional designing problems and physics challenges can be more clearly defined as concepts that one can see and “touch” which vastly improves the learning outcomes and potential for further enquiry and research.
Augmented reality can be used to show the hidden stories of the world around us with real-time information on the significance of perhaps historical buildings around us.
Other things we need to watch out for: “Social is real. Mobile is real. Millennials are real. These things have an effect on each other, they accelerate each other. So that leads to this exponential disruption” of a market. Doing nothing is not an option. It was an option a few years ago. Before the iPhone, it was a super-valid option to just wait on mobile. ‘Let’s see if people read on mobile phones. Do they download apps?’ Now, waiting is not an option. So look at startups. Learn from them, from their concepts of most viable product (MVP) and speed to market. Start with exponential change,” Maks Giordano told Publishing Perspectives after the Fair. “And then respond. With hyperinnovation.”
By Melvin Kaabwe
https://publishingperspectives.com/2017/10/maks-giordano-the-arts-book-marketing-hyperinnovation/
