Liber will bring together 7,000 book professionals, strengthening ties with the printing sector

The book sector is experiencing a good moment that will be reflected in a new edition of the International Book Fair (Liber). The professional congress will open a new edition on Tuesday at Fira Gran Via with the forecast of promoting more than 3,500 business meetings among the 7,000 professionals who will attend this year, of which 40% will be international. "There is a very good economic atmosphere. We bring together clients from all over the world," explains the executive director of the Federation of Publishers' Guilds of Spain (FGEE), Antonio María Ávila.

During the three days of the fair, the agreements closed between publishers, booksellers, distributors, literary agents, and institutions will represent a third of the annual exports of the Spanish publishing sector, with the global figure standing at 350 million euros. With Spain being one of the 10 countries in the world that export the most books, Latin America accounts for a good part of the sales, with the United States, far behind, placing in a second position and the emergence of new markets such as China.

Liber, organized by Fira de Barcelona, has traditionally been a sales fair, but it is also opening up to promoting the sale of rights. For this reason, the fair has invited almost 700 key professionals in the purchase and prescription of books, from 65 countries. "An essential environment is created for business meetings," emphasizes its director, Ángel Celorrio.

A total of 250 exhibitors from 12 countries will be part of this year's edition, which will occupy an area of 8,000 square meters in the L'Hospitalet de Llobregat venue. After the boom that reading experienced during the pandemic, the sector has continued to grow since then, with the pull of children's and young adult literature, and the emergence of new phenomena such as the graphic novel. With an accumulated growth of 17% since 2020, turnover stood at 2,857 million euros in 2023. The good health of the sector will not prevent addressing some of its challenges in the 75 conferences that have been programmed, with the participation of some 200 speakers, such as artificial intelligence (AI), but there will also be talk of the rise of audiobooks or print-on-demand.

For the first time, the book congress will coincide with Graphispag, a trade fair for the graphic industry and visual communication. Knowing that the visionaries who proclaimed the death of the printed book when the ebook appeared were wrong ---paper still represents 95% of the business---, Liber thus wants to foster synergies with a very close sector, the one that is in charge of printing them, taking advantage of the powerful portfolio that the fair institution has to expand the reach of the fairs it hosts. This year, attendees to Liber and Graphispag will be allowed to move freely between both congresses, with the aim of deepening relations in future editions.

A fair with two venues

Although Barcelona is the country's great publishing capital, with the main imprints based in the city, Liber was born with two venues, alternating its celebration here and in Madrid. There has only been one time that it could not be held in Barcelona, with the Olympic Games. Two consecutive editions had to be organized in Madrid, an issue resolved with two consecutive editions in the Catalan capital when the hangover of 1992 passed.