Meetings with Publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair

by

I currently have five wishes in the world of publishing. Three have come true. The fourth and the fifth will hopefully be fulfilled in the coming years. Here they are:

  1. Publish a Novel in Israel—check!
  2. Publish in a respected publishing house in Israel—check!
  3. Win literary prizes and publish short stories in established literary magazines—check! (See Publications and Prizes)
  4. Publish a story in the top 10 literary magazines in the world, or win a significant international competition—working on it.
  5. Publish “The Best of All Worlds” abroad. 🙂

The fifth wish leads the way to the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Ofir Oz at the Frankfurt Book Fair, OCT 2022

The Frankfurt Book Fair brings together agents, authors, and publishers from all over the world. It takes place every year in Frankfurt, Germany. It is the largest book fair in the world for selling and buying publishing and translation rights. This year, except for Russia and China, almost all countries participated.

The Frankfurt Book Fair

During the fair, I met publishers from the USA and Great Britain, Germany, India, Japan, and Turkey. They all returned to their homes with a copy of “The Best of All Worlds” to consider for publishing.

Well, did you sign a contract at the fair?

This is the issue—nothing is closed yet. At the fair, we meet and make connections, and the publishers take our books home to them to read, deliberate, and decide. The process takes time, sometimes it takes a year or two, but for now, this is the harvest:

  • A wonderful meeting with a relevant UK publisher [fingers crossed!].
  • A very good session with a small German publisher and another British press.
  • Good meetings with publishers from Canada, Turkey, Japan, India, and two more from Germany.
  • About 15 more leads of publishers to whom I sent the book.
  • Dozens more leads from publishers that I wouldn’t have reached if I hadn’t been at the fair.
  • I met with a company that develops a tool for distributing rights and with the owner of “Publish Drive” Company that appeared on Forbes’ 30 under 30 (soon in a separate post).

And here is a video I have uploaded to TikTok with #booktok

Ofir Oz at the TikTok booth in the Frankfurt Book Fair

On my last day, I was visiting the old city of Frankfurt with my friends. It was remarkable!

Keep your fingers crossed for me and “The Best of All Worlds”!