Report on Frankfurt

Grabbed from Justine Larbalestier's blog, this dishy report from The Guardian on the Frankfurt Book Fair, which delves rather deeply into the whole PFD mess in England. Chaos and woe! Unless you're a smaller or independent agent, in which case you might happily wait for the furor to die down, and calmly continue to go about your business. To close, a quote from one of Britain's top agents:

'No writer should ever go to Frankfurt. It's soul-destroying. You see writers being traded like pork bellies.'

EDIT: Another article on the fair, this one from The New York Times, which echoes the quote about writers. In this case:

In a brief moment between appointments Ms. Stein acknowledged that most writers would be horrified by the way their work was negotiated. "The last thing you want is for an author to see this," she said. "It's just so vulgar."

As I've said before, it's just not that kind of a fair. Hopefully, as I concentrate in children's books, Bologna will be different!