Bologna 2011 is officially over. Despite a general nervousness in the publishing industry due to the recession, cutbacks in institutional budgets, changes in delivery of content and sundry other issues, the biggest international book fair to focus exclusively on children's books had a great energy and feeling of optimism. Aisles were crowded, both with publishers, the Italian public, and illustrators, many of whom came from around Europe to show their work.
Annick was there in both a selling and buying capacity. Gayna Theophilus, our new rights director, pitched Annick titles to our international agents as well as other publishers. Meanwhile, I was on the floor meeting with publishers who were presenting English language rights to us. Now Gayna will have follow-up work to do in sending out pdfs and hard copies for those titles which were requested, and publishers who met with us to sell will be doing the same for the properties we wish to look at. Certainly sending material electronically has made the whole process less expensive and faster than in the days when there were only hard copies or printouts of pages.
In the weeks to come we'll report on the results of Bologna, but in the meantime, these photos show our exhibit, along with the Bologna sunshine that poured into our stand:
