The Frankfurt Book Fair closed on October 13 with around 7,300 exhibitors in total, from over 100 countries. Altogether 275,342 visitors attended the Fair (October 9 – 13), of which 142,921 were present during the trade visitors' days.
Apart from the Brazilian authors calling for equality of opportunities and access to education; similar demands were made elsewhere at the fair: in numerous events, the Literacy Campaign (LitCam) of the Frankfurt Book Fair highlighted the incredible statistic, according to which there are around 7.5 million functionally illiterate people in Germany today.
On stages such as the Weltempfang – Centre for Politics, Literature and Translation (Hall 5.0), events examining the crisis in the EU and the question of how children and young people shape their lives during times of crisis, were very well received. Visits by numerous politicians, including Michel Barnier, EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, demonstrated the importance of the Book Fair as a place for socio-political exchanges.
For the five days, books and the Book Fair dominated the social media, with the hashtag #fbm13 maintaining itself at the top of Twitter in Germany. More than 9,000 journalists travelled to the Fair.
New conference formats, such as CONTEC and StoryDrive, have certainly contributed to the rapidly changing face of the Book Fair, and to the fact that it now attracts new groups of visitors. Around 3,500 participants from 72 countries took part in the more than 20 seminars and conferences of the Frankfurt Academy. Here, too, the number of international participants showed an increase on the year before.
