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Frankfurt Book Fair blog
Rebecca Sinclair

I am writing this on the plane back from Frankfurt.  Having made a somewhat fleeting visit of 36 hours, I hold my hand up and admit to being a Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) lightweight.  A plane journey is always a good time to reflect especially when, in my case, I have forgotten my book.

The last time I visited FBF was back in 1997 when (pre-Penguin) I worked in international sales so FBF was the highlight, or lowlight depending on your viewpoint, of my year.  Five days of back-to-back meetings with customers and agents meant that I inevitably returned to the UK with the start of a cold and a sore head.  Ten years on, I was keen to see how much the event might have developed given the scorching pace of change during that time.  And my conclusion?  Not a lot.  It is still the same vast space beavering with activity with its somewhat paltry food offering (though I was taken with the introduction of Mövenpick ice-cream trolleys) and I am relieved that the smoking policy has been updated since my last visit.  The Penguin stand is still vast and impressive (though, I admit that this time I might be biased). I am also struck by the same question: do all these people really work in publishing?

So, despite the huge technological advances (back in 1997 I used to fax my handwritten orders back to the office), most of us still see the need, and indeed value, of attending the world’s largest book fair.  And, it isn’t just because people can meet face-to-face to discuss business, it’s also that they can share a beer or two at the end of a long hard day. Social networking sites may be able to help us find long-lost friends but there isn’t yet a cyber equivalent to match that personal social interaction.  I find this somewhat comforting in the same way that I felt when I heard that an online textbook company in the US had started to issue ‘scratch and sniff’ stickers to students who admitted to a yearning for the smell of a musty textbook.  I guess that makes me old fashioned.

The other thing that strikes me about the sheer volume of people who travel around the world – and in some cases, across it – to attend FBF is the impact of our choice to do so.  Other than an enlightened few, not many of us back in 1997 would have worried about the carbon output of our journey to Frankfurt.  These days, we are overwhelmed with stories about global warming and the consequences of human behaviour yet we still choose, in the main, to fly.

I attended the Bookseller green seminar back in May.  One of the speakers was Alastair Sawday (of whose guide books I am a huge fan).  Alastair is well-known for his environmental campaigning and, when asked what the publishing industry could do to play their part, he responded simply: take the train to Frankfurt.  (You can read about Alastair’s train ride to Frankfurt in today’s Publishing News FBF Daily.)  I nodded my head along with many others but didn’t follow it up.  But when I do a quick back of an airplane napkin calculation and tot up that the carbon footprint of this single event is likely to be around 130,000 tonnes (see rough calculation below), probably equivalent to the annual footprint of a global company, I am ashamed. 

So why didn’t I get the train?  I told myself that I couldn’t justify the time out of the office or away from home.  Truth is, I could have just as easily worked on the train and would have had a much more pleasant experience along the way.  We publishing companies (and indeed all companies) need to do more to encourage - yes encourage, not just tolerate - our employees taking the extra time to travel by train (which, by Alastair’s calculations isn’t far off the time it takes to fly) because it will cost us a lot less in the long run – and we’re not talking Euros.  So, the campaign for 2008 starts here: take the train to Frankfurt.

Rough carbon footprint calculation of FBF:

Assume 300,000 attendees in 2007 (286,000 in 2006), 50,000 from within Germany: assume 50% fly on a typical flight from Dusseldorf to Frankfurt which measures 0.08 tonnes (25,000 x 0.08 = 2,000)

200,000 from outside Germany but within Europe: assume 75% fly on a typical flight of London to Frankfurt which measures 0.17 tonnes (150,000 x 0.17 = 25,500)

50,000 long-haul visitors: assume 100% fly on a typical flight of New York to Frankfurt which measures 1.73 tonnes (50,000 x 1.73 = 86,500)

All air flights = 114,000 tonnes. Add car trips, train journeys, energy at Buchmesse and hotels takes total to approximately 130,000 tonnes.

Rebecca Sinclair, Corporate Communications Manager

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