FBF and agents reach detente in LitAg switch row

Rights professionals upset at the move of the Literary Agents and Scouts Centre (LitAg) at Frankfurt Book Fair next year have been “somewhat placated” about the hall switch following a meeting with FBF director Jürgen Boos as the fair drew to a close. 

Boos and the LitAg advisory committee—a group of senior agents and scouts—met on Friday (12th October), when the FBF boss was presented with a petition of over 100 signatures from those who opposed the move.  

Agents and scouts had been incensed at the transfer of the LitAg from Hall 6.3 to the Festhalle, a standalone building at the fair’s east entrance. FBF said it had no choice in transferring the LitAg as the owner of the fair’s grounds, Frankfurter Messe, is beginning a renovation which will see significant parts of the complex being shut and rebuilt over the next few years.   

In Friday’s meeting, Boos explained that the Festhalle was the only possible location to accommodate the more than 400 tables that currently make up the LitAg.  

Lora Fountain, m.d. of Paris-based Agence Littéraire Lora Fountain & Associates, who led the petition, said: “It’s pretty obvious that it's the only solution to a very complex situation…it’s still not a great solution but after getting all this information, there really doesn’t seem to be any other option.”
 
Concerns, however, do remain that the location of the Festhalle will eat into the time for agents’ back-to-back 30-minute meetings, as the new LitAg location will be a five-to-10-minute walk to the main part of the fair.     

The Festhalle switch was a heated talking point within the LitAg at FBF 2018, an issue which may have been less contentious if FBF had communicated more clearly, Fountain said. She added: “We did point out that if all this information had been sent out at the beginning instead of the less clear original e-mail, there would have been much less confusion and consternation.”

Scout Louise Allen-Jones told The Bookseller: ""I don’t think they (the organisers) have any choice, that is the problem. Whatever happens, we have to make the best of a bad situation. I’m on the LitAg committee and we were shown around, saw the lie of the land, and I thought it was quite a nice building.  The organisers are aiming to make it as easy for us as they can, but the reality is going to be difficult and detrimentally time-consuming – we will lose at best a third of our 30-minute standard meeting time."

Curtis Brown agent Cathryn Summerhayes believes that agents will do their best to adapt to the new layout. "It’s obviously not an ideal situation but, just as we agents and rights professionals have adapted to fit the needs of an ever-changing book market, we can adapt to work in a different rights centre," she said.