2024: Lots of life and hustle and bustle at the Leipzig Book Fair

Thursday, 28 March 2024 00:00
Written by Portal Editor

Once again it was an experience to visit the Leipzig Book Fair, which this year had the motto “Who’s still reading?” was standing. And anyone who was just a little interested in the age structure of the visitors in the full exhibition halls could see that young people in particular read books and do so with great enthusiasm.

With 175,000 visitors, the book fair set a new record in 2014, i.e. 10 years ago, with around 31,000 visitors coming mainly to the still young manga comic convention, which is now a highlight at the book fair due to the costuming alone.

A year later, in 2015, the book fair focused on “1965 to 2015 Germany – Israel” and thus honoured the unique relationship between the two states. Numerous authors from Israel and Germany spoke about the past, present and future of the special relationship, which is currently being put to such an immense test due to the Gaza war.

With 208,000 visitors, the 2017 book fair set another record. Around 105,000 visitors came mainly because of the manga comic convention, i.e. more than 50% of the visitors.

For the first time in the following year, 2018, the Leipzig Book Fair did not end with a record number of visitors. Due to difficult weather conditions and a disruption at Leipzig Central Station due to the unexpectedly severe onset of winter, only “197,000 visitors” came to the Leipzig Book Fair. The number of exhibitors grew to 2,635. However, around 104,000 visitors also attended this year's Manga Comic Con. The host country was Romania.

After the reunification and the move from the exhibition centre on the market to the new exhibition centre in 1998, the book fair began to rise again with consistent growth rates. On March 3, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Leipzig Book Fair 2020 as well as all related events such as the Manga Comic Convention and the Leipzig Reads Reading Festival had to be cancelled.

In 2022, the book fair was cancelled for the third time in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Numerous cancellations from exhibitors... meant that the expected quality and breadth of content... was no longer guaranteed,” the organizers announced, among other things. the publishing groups Oetinger and Penguin Random House withdrew their participation. Since the cancellation came only a short time before the scheduled start, the organizer decided not to create a digital alternative program.

The book fair was originally planned for March in 2023, but was postponed as a precautionary measure to April 27th to 30th, 2023 to provide planning security. The visitor record was still broken: 274,000 visitors, of which 102,000 went to the manga comic convention.