International rights still a ‘very active sales channel’ for U.S. publishers

// GERMANY

Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest trade show in publishing in all of Europe, was a productive show this year for the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Christian Collective. ECPA represents a number of Christian publishers at Frankfurt each year.

Several service companies participated in the collective this year: Fred Rudy & Associates, Goodwill Rights and Riggins International Rights Services. A few publishers went to the fair for the first time—Whitaker House, Guideposts and Harrison House.

Cindy Riggins, president of Riggins International, sees Frankfurt as a “can’t miss” show. This year, Riggins represented 15 clients—AMG Publishers and B&H Publishing Group among them—and announced the signing of two new clients at the show, Christian Art and Christian Media Publishing, both of South Africa.

“Business was very good,” Riggins said of Frankfurt. “We did see a little bit of decrease in the number of publishers that we met with. I think we had a total of about 33 appointments, down maybe 5%.”

Jim Elwell, director of international publishing at Tyndale House Publishers, also had a good experience at the fair.

“Frankfurt is always an extraordinary event for us in the publishing year,” Elwell said. “Our schedule was jammed for all of our staff. As usual, there are many opportunities that we are busy following up and expect will turn into great business and ministry. This year’s show was upbeat, busy and productive.”

Marilyn Gordon, director of rights and contracts at Baker Publishing Group, also had a positive show.

“We met with 65 publishing houses from over 25 different countries,” Gordon said. “The face-to-face meetings, information gleaned on publishing activities in different countries and the friendships we develop are all an important part of business at Frankfurt.

Gordon also reported that sales of evangelical e-books in non-English-speaking countries was “lagging far behind” U.S. e-book sales. —Johnson

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