Books for Kids. A Fair for Everyone

The second day of the fair was actually quite a bit busier than the first.  I'm still getting the impression that that's not the norm here, but if every show is facing less attendance this year, and we had that much traffic yesterday, then I'd say once this whole economic thing passes (or before it came), traffic here will (and probably did) border on the amazing.  I'd rate yesterday a fair 7 out of 10.

Outside our exhibit and hall, I managed to get some time to check out the other international collectives.  But first, a note on that:

The American Collective Stand (which, along with Combined Book Exhibit, is the "us" that I refer to), is one of a few collectives of American publishers (ask me, and I'd say we're the best!).  In most other countries there's only one, or at least only one official collective stand, and that collective stand is generally part of the that countries publisher's association.  Together, these groups make one group that is both an advocate and collective organizer, and in many cases is somehow connected to the government.  In the US, we have groups like us (remember what "us" means again?), and then on the advocacy side, there's the AAP (which is the only one of its kind that I know of in the states).  So when I say other international collectives, that's not to say that I haven't seen publishers from other countries, but that I'm going to see what the countries themselves are sending rather than what each individual publisher is sending.

So now that you have your crash course in international collectives, I'll make another generality:  lots of people do a lot of similar stuff.  In my travels throughout this show, I've seen lots of updated and reimagined fairy tales, some relaunches of old franchises, lots of "comics for kids" and a fair amount of non-fiction and novelty stuff.  That's all a quite sweeping generalization.  Of course, everywhere has their specific content, which is what I love so much about the spreading of ideas that these fair (and PubMatch.org) provide venues for. 

I grabbed a whole bunch of publisher seasonal and rights catalogs, which I plan to go through and compare to get a better idea of the similarities and differences.  I've also taken a lot of pictures that I'll share once I can get them onto a computer.

Day three is about half an hour away, and I can't wait to see what it brings.