Frankfurt Book Messe 2006 Part I
How many books do you read? I love reading and for the last week, I have been looking at books printed all over the world. As I looked at the books available, my first thought was "This stuff is crap." My second thought was "Who buys this crap," and my third thought was "How do you market crap?"
One piece of crap was a book called "Naked Gymnastics" I had to pass this book jacket every day for a week. It was a book cover with a naked woman holding her foot over her head. This naked woman was not smiling. This naked woman looked like she was pretty pissed off that her leg was over her head. Who wants to buy a book about a pissed of woman who happens to be naked.
Not all books were crap. I like what I brought to display but I also liked several smaller publishers including a publisher called the Blue Giraffe. The publisher and I had a nice chat and she is interested in representing a company called symfollies. Really unique DvDs that are supposed to teach children about classical music. The owner of Symfollies visited my booth and gave me a presentation. I will really be happy if they find distribution. It is a unique product and beautifully made.
My booth was small but two product lines filled it out nicely. Sofia Verlag's booth was located in the children's section next to comic books... We were next to the MANGA E comic book company. The company sold Manga comic books on an E platform. The problem was that they did not speak English or German and they did not have anything in their booth that told you they were selling electronic Manga comic books.
For a week I watched the six men in this booth try to entice people into their booth. The problem was that their booth had three things: One flat screen TV and two computers. The men would stand around trying to figure out how to get people to visit their booth.. At one point, they ended up standing next to our booth or sitting in a chair next to our booth and pointing people at their booth.. this actually worked better for us b/c people would walk around the chair and pause to look at our display.
In addition to visiting trade booths in search of products to distribute, I spent my time looking for companies to license Hocus and Lotus. This was much more successful than I anticipated and we are going to spend the next few months finalizing contracts. While pursuing licensing contracts, a few companies asked for assistance finding product. It seems that good product is indeed difficult to find and that I was not the only one noticing how much crap is out there.
One piece of crap was a book called "Naked Gymnastics" I had to pass this book jacket every day for a week. It was a book cover with a naked woman holding her foot over her head. This naked woman was not smiling. This naked woman looked like she was pretty pissed off that her leg was over her head. Who wants to buy a book about a pissed of woman who happens to be naked.
Not all books were crap. I like what I brought to display but I also liked several smaller publishers including a publisher called the Blue Giraffe. The publisher and I had a nice chat and she is interested in representing a company called symfollies. Really unique DvDs that are supposed to teach children about classical music. The owner of Symfollies visited my booth and gave me a presentation. I will really be happy if they find distribution. It is a unique product and beautifully made.
My booth was small but two product lines filled it out nicely. Sofia Verlag's booth was located in the children's section next to comic books... We were next to the MANGA E comic book company. The company sold Manga comic books on an E platform. The problem was that they did not speak English or German and they did not have anything in their booth that told you they were selling electronic Manga comic books.
For a week I watched the six men in this booth try to entice people into their booth. The problem was that their booth had three things: One flat screen TV and two computers. The men would stand around trying to figure out how to get people to visit their booth.. At one point, they ended up standing next to our booth or sitting in a chair next to our booth and pointing people at their booth.. this actually worked better for us b/c people would walk around the chair and pause to look at our display.
In addition to visiting trade booths in search of products to distribute, I spent my time looking for companies to license Hocus and Lotus. This was much more successful than I anticipated and we are going to spend the next few months finalizing contracts. While pursuing licensing contracts, a few companies asked for assistance finding product. It seems that good product is indeed difficult to find and that I was not the only one noticing how much crap is out there.
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