Melissa Posten, children's buyer and event coordinator for the Novel Neighbor in Webster Groves, Mo., and Clarissa Hadge, bookstore manager and children's buyer at Trident Booksellers and Café in Boston, Mass., are attending the 56th annual Bologna Children's Book Fair taking place in Bologna, Italy, April 1-4. Both booksellers are able to attend because of fellowships from Bookselling Without Borders, a collection of independent publishers that gives American booksellers the opportunity to attend international book fairs free of cost.
Founder Michael Reynolds's purpose for this program is to encourage booksellers in the United States to "become a part of an international community of bookselling." Reynolds would like the "book industry to be less compartmentalized" and "for more booksellers to enjoy fruitful relationships with publishers, agents, authors, editors and translators from abroad." His hope is that "booksellers are as impressed as I am by the incredible variety and breathtaking sophistication of publishing realities around the world, and that they return more inclined to enrich their own stores (figuratively and literally) by selling more diverse, international books."
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Clarissa Hadge and Melissa Posten |
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This hope is certainly coming to fruition in the cases of Posten and Hadge. "It's a very overwhelming fair," Posten told Shelf Awareness. "It is incredibly cool to see just how big the worldwide publishing market for children is. I feel like we are very U.S.-centric... I think it's easy to think that we are 'it' because so many of our books are taken into other countries. But it's humbling to see just how much is out there that we never see." It's frustrating, too, she said: "I could tell that there were stories that... people would find interesting in our country but I have no idea how we would ever get access to them. Especially the countries where they speak Spanish--there's a market for books in Spanish... and there's a market for translated stories. There's just so many things we don't have." She finished this thought by saying, "This show is, what, five times as big as BEA? Every single thing is a kids' book. And we can't have almost any of them!"
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The booksellers also spent time meeting with publishers, learning more about bookselling internationally. Hadge said the two had learned that, "due to The Company That Shall Not be Named," independent bookstores and publishers "in Europe have found that they need to... get [books] to the customers much more quickly than before." Hadge was also troubled by how many non-U.S. publishers expressed concerns about distribution that kept them from trying to make their books available in the U.S. market. "I think the more opportunities we have for American booksellers... to come over here and say, 'we have a need for [these stories]' "--to have people on the front lines express a desire and interest in international titles and translated works--"will hopefully produce some results." Anna Thorn, the BWB coordinator traveling with the booksellers, said speaking with publishers was "really validating for the whole purpose of the program... Booksellers are the missing part in the entire conversation. We hear exactly what people are asking for and not getting because they don't have access."
Overall, though, the booksellers were--of course--extremely excited to be at the fair and impressed with the variety of books on display. "Incredible illustrators," Hadge said, "Stories that we've not seen before--trim sizes we've not seen before!" "How big are shelves??" Posten joked. "It just feels so good to be here!" she continued. "There are some times at trade shows [when] the people who work in adult books are kind of snotty about children's books. And everyone here is in love with children's books--28,000 people who love children's books! That's amazing! It's just nice to know that every single person you're walking past is, in one way or another, feeling some of the same things you're feeling." --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness