Beijing's digital fair brings technical headaches but also plus points, say publishers

UK publishers have given mixed reports of their experience at the digital-only Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF), with the format offering up new possibilities though also some technical headaches.

Asia's biggest book fair kicked off last week with the launch of its Smart Rights Link for online meetings, with organisers saying 400,000 books would be uploaded. The UK is still the fair's biggest international client with more than 50 UK publishers registered and 1,200 titles.

A Global Reading Festival featuring live streamed events also launched featuring, among other things, a British Night with two hours of talks and discussions in association with the British Council. It is being followed by a year-round professional programme designed to give publishers the chance to exhibit, network and negotiate virtually. 

Pinelopi Pourpoutidou, foreign and digital sales director for Michael O'Mara Books, said this was the first time she hadn't been able to visit Beijing in a decade. The firm decided to only exhibit its titles this year and not take virtual meetings as it already works with various Chinese agents who represent its books there.

She said: “To be honest, even getting to grips with the BIBF portal to upload our titles has been very difficult. My colleague had to spend the entire week trying to upload the necessary material, as the portal constantly failed, possibly due to high volumes of traffic. Technical issues is one problem with virtual fairs, but hopefully if there are future fairs in the same format, these will eventually be dealt with."

Pourpoutidou added: “As we won’t be exhibiting in person at Frankfurt either this year, we have arranged a full schedule with virtual meetings, over the first few weeks of October. It remains to be seen if it will work as well as having a physical presence. I think it will be very challenging.”

However, Angela Mota Escudero, a foreign rights executive at Hardie Grant, said she had found the digital format at Beijing “very effective”, with no major problems and greater flexibility with meetings.

She said: “Inevitably, sometimes there are technical difficulties — unfortunately a good internet connection can’t always be guaranteed on both sides — but often it’s a case of experimenting with different platforms to see which one best suits each publisher’s situation. I think we all still prefer to meet publishers in person — building relationships in a virtual meeting is undoubtedly more of a challenge — but virtual meetings aren’t subject to the same time constraints as those held at an on-site fair and it’s possible to meet with a greater number of customers over an extended period as a result."

She pointed out that Smart BIBF, a full schedule of professional events with matchmaking roundtables and meeting scheduling, does not begin until 26th September, just a few weeks before Frankfurt. “This is not ideal, but we are circumventing the problem by holding BIBF meetings now on other online platforms," she said. "Some Chinese publishers rely heavily on translators at book fairs and so haven’t accepted our invitations to online meetings, preferring instead to talk to our agents, but there has been a good take-up nevertheless, and we are excited about having the opportunity of identifying prospective new customers on the matchmaking service. It’s great too, to have the opportunity to upload our catalogues and key titles so that publishers can see the breadth and quality of our list.”

Nosy Crow m.d. Kate Wilson said: “Essentially we have used the Beijing Book Fair as a peg to hang pre-booked video conferencing calls on, showing the new material that we would have brought to the fair. These have been arranged either directly with publishers we work with frequently, or via our agents.

“Our sales to China have been and continue to be very strong this year. But books, particularly children’s books, are physical things and people are built for face-to-face contact. The video-conferencing is hugely important, but it doesn’t take the place of a real book fair. As soon as it’s safe to travel, and our customers are attending, we’ll be back at book international book fairs.”

Publishing assistant Emma Chonofsky organised an exhibition for Search Press at the fair – an event the crafts indie would not normally be able to attend in person anyway. She said: “The fact that the book fair is virtual this year has allowed us to display titles and set up meetings with publishers we generally wouldn’t see. The preparation workload has decreased – there is little paperwork and far less work with stand organisation.” She said, however, the display of titles had become “an exercise in metadata spreadsheets” with time spent making sure cover images are the right size and occasional problems uploading titles and setting up accounts.

“I am not sure how many people are actually viewing the account that I set up, and I’m even less sure that the titles are displaying properly,” she said. “I’m also finding some of the set-up difficult to understand. But in trying to replicate the experience of a book fair online, I think they’ve done fairly well.”

The seven-hour time difference meant meetings started early and trying to add more would mean starting at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., she said. However, there were actually not huge amounts of meetings to arrange.

She said: “The biggest difference I’ve noticed though is the number of attendees. Many of my contacts have told me they won’t be attending any book fairs this year, virtual or not. As a result, I have a reduced number of meetings. I’m optimistic though, and overall, I’ve been grateful that the opportunity to conduct virtual meetings at virtual book fairs has been presented.”

One first-time client is Nick Ackland, m.d. of Bristol-based packager and children's book publisher I Am A Bookworm, who agreed the virtual format offered up new possibilities without the need for travel but also stressed its limitations.

He said: “For exhibitions in the Far East we have traditionally chosen to exhibit at the Shanghai Book Fair rather than Beijing, but with limited physical events occurring this year, we have been able to exhibit digitally at more events than we traditionally would. Being able to digitally exhibit has been a real positive success in terms of company exposure, whilst also allowing us to keep costs down. However, we are still finding buyers to be hesitant and can’t help but feel that a face-to-face meeting may have helped to secure that rights deal and new contact.

“One of the main challenges we are finding is that the digital events has not allowed us to meet as many new publishers as physically exhibiting usually would. As a small publisher and packager, having a person on a stand to say hello to and to exchange a business card with is invaluable. Even if you aren’t able to secure a deal in the short term, having that contact and keeping in touch with relevant communication may yield a result further down the line. Flicking through an online catalogue on a rights portal doesn’t offer you the opportunity to have that human interaction and exchange details.”

A BIBF spokesperson said: "As with any new platform, there were a few technical challenges at the outset and we have continued making improvements throughout. We also have a technical team on hand to help anyone experiencing difficulties. We aim to ensure the platform is fully operational in time for this month's professional activities and have every confidence that exhibitors will find it an invaluable resource over the coming months.

"In the light of international travel restrictions due to Covid-19, we are pleased to provide an opportunity for the international publishing community to get back to constructive business, and are delighted with the levels of interest shown so far in the Chinese market."