Folly Goes to Frankfurt: Diary of a book fair

Published by the Sunday Star Times, 26 October 2025

https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360861687/folly-goes-frankfurt-diary-book-fair

Editor Emily Makere Broadmore and Art Director Dana Turner travelled to the world’s biggest book fair, the Frankfurt Buchmesse, over 15 – 18 October in Germany where their international publication Folly was part of the New Zealand Collective Stand. The third issue of Folly launches in November.

Day One

The Frankfurt Book Fair is 900m from our hotel, but the pavement outside the hotel is crowded with of people who look as though they might mug us.  We enquire with our German receptionist and are told we are perfectly safe. ‘They’re just smoking crack. Can’t you smell it?’

‘What does it smell like?’

‘Like pee.’

‘As in urine?’

‘Yah. Don’t you have this problem at home?

When we shake our heads, she says with German bluntness, ‘Well you will soon. Just you wait. It starts with fentanyl. Next thing everyone’s smoking crack on the pavement.’ Feeling reassured, we powerwalk to the Book Fair, and navigate through the six multi-storied halls, which are set around a concrete courtyard the size of a rugby field, to the Aotearoa New Zealand Collective stand. It is baby blue with bird cartoons. Dana heads upstairs for a meeting with the Italians, and I set off to hear the latest data insights from Neilson, a company that tracks book sales. Inside everyone is sweating like pigs. The screens show giant maps with value and volume growth by country. New Zealand doesn’t feature on either list. The next graph is titled Average Selling Price Increases Everywhere Except New Zealand.

I mooch back to the Aotearoa stand and ask Dana how Italy was. ‘Smelt like coffee,’ she says, ‘With lots of winking men in beautiful suits. They reckon Folly will do well with their Arabic market.’

Given the domestic market is screwed, this is a positive. As are the following meetings of the day, including with a UK distributor who demands Dana recite sexy poetry. ‘You’d feel pretty cool reading this on your commute to Kings Cross,’ he says, waving a copy of Folly around. ‘But why are you doing only one a year?’ He keeps two copies and tells us to come back tomorrow.

We munch five-euro pretzels in the courtyard beside a giant helium Astrerix mascot, then head to our next meeting with a ponytailed American called Joe who is the CEO of a global distribution empire. ‘I like you, but I can’t pigeonhole you,’ he says. ‘Usually when people innovate, they change one thing, But you’re changing everything. What the fuck are you?’

‘We’re a journal Joe,’ we say.

‘Journal people sit on grass sipping wine at literary festivals,’ he replies. ‘I fucking hate journal people.’ He interrogates us for forty-five minutes and takes a copy of Folly with him.

That afternoon Boston University holds a session on AI and Ethics with a panel of AI licensing companies. Stony faced publishers pack out the room. ‘Last year there were no AI sessions at the fair,’ a CE from Switzerland tells me. ‘All the publishers were like Talk to the hand. This year we’re closing deals. I’ve already signed a dozen up.’ We head back to Hall 6, where we run into Joe chain smoking on his way to the first of three parties with the biggest publishers at the fair. ‘Which party are you girls off to?’ We tell him we were considering France because they’d likely have better wine, but Joe suggests Ingham because at least they’ll all be speaking English. At Ingham we lean against the wall next to a pregnant French woman drinking sparkling wine out of a champagne flute. No one is speaking English.

Day Two

We start our day drinking black coffee with the Turks and discussing order quantities for a European print run. Dana dons a giant tulle gown and negotiates an additional 15% off. ‘If New Zealand wins the cricket, we give fifty percent off,’ the sales manager tells us. We walk 900m back to our stand, which involves a flat airport-style escalator designed to move the 200,000 people around the interconnected halls. I comment that the buchmesse is like an airport on crack. ‘It’s a fentanyl crisis,’ Dana replies.

At 11am we are hosting an event at the Aotearoa stand, which is part of the official Buchmesse schedule: A Folly Affair of Poetry and Tulle. I didn’t expect it to be approved, and we don’t expect many people to turn up. But before long the crowd has blocked the entire aisle and Dana is performing poetry in a tulle gown while German TV films for the nightly news. ‘Goodness,’ a fellow publisher says. ‘You girls know how to lure in the punters.’ They include a handsome Indian man in a ballgown (Love your work girls, but I can’t help you – I am here to buy children books), sales and rights agents, European booksellers keen to stock us and Folly fans. ‘We’ve been following your socials, loved the ones of you in first class,’ one girl says excitedly, knocking back the bubbly. ‘It was economy,’ I reply. ‘But with a lot of tulle.’ As Dana performs X rated poetry, Joe wanders past. He has a woman with him, who he introduces to me as his sales agent. ‘I love these girls’ he says to her. ‘But I don’t know what the fuck to do with them.’ He turns to me. ‘Are you a book or a magazine?’

‘Neither,’ I say. ‘We’re a journal Joe.’

‘I hate journal people,’ he says. ‘But I like you. You’re fun.’

Dana asks him to hold the train of her gown, and he poses for a photo. Noeline, a veteran Frankfurt publisher with long painted talons, wanders past and squeezes my shoulder.  ‘I’ve seen articles about you girls,’ she says. ‘Good on you for giving it a go.’ Dana gives me the side-eye and we ask politely how long she’s been coming to Frankfurt. ‘38 years not including the Covid ones,’ she says. ‘There are some things you do in life, like have kids and get into publishing…. I should have just gone to California and fucked.’

Day Three

Over breakfast of sausage and pickles, Dana positions herself to watch the morning drug deals. Today this involves a red Ferrari. The occupant is passing items to people who had previously been lying along the pavement after having obtained their clean needles from a state regulated stall 100m down the road. An American journalist next to us is gossiping about why a high profile CEO was fired just before the fair. His colleague hushes him, glaring over her coffee at us. ‘No one knows why he was fired so everyone is speculating,’ he explains to me. I shrug, telling him the same thing happened when our Reserve Bank Governor was fired. He asks where we are from, then says; ‘Oh yeah, nice people at the New Zealand stand. All from the nineties.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, wondering if I have misheard. ‘The people, or our stand?’

‘Both,’ he replies. ‘Good to see some new blood,’ Then, changing the subject offers, ‘All our billionaires move to New Zealand. Does anyone like them? I mean, you’re welcome to them.’

‘They live in the South Island,’ Dana replies. ‘In Queenstown. It’s the only place left in New Zealand where no one will hate them for being rich.’

At the New Zealand stand that morning a bunch of people are reading Folly and talking about the New Zealand drinks tonight. Ours are apparently very popular because we always have ‘good wine.’ Problem is, the wine hasn’t turned up and no one knows where it is. The Publishers Association rep running our stand is chasing down buchmesse logistics, who have left the box in a warehouse somewhere. Soon a photo of a crate appears in the NZ Frankfurt group chat.

It will be delivered within two hours, another message says.

Dana and I head off to our first meeting with a European distributor, a handsome man in Italian leather shoes and a slick suit. ‘45%,’ he tells us. ‘Is that the price everyone gets,’ I ask. ‘Or are you expecting us to negotiate.’ He looks affronted, then impressed. ‘You girls are tough,’ he says, offering a better margin. Dana gets him down an extra 2 percent and leaves him with some poetry cards.

On our way back we run into Noeline. Today she’s wearing a twinset and pearls. ‘Got your net out girls,’ she says. ‘Luring them in? Good on you for having a go.’ We nod politely and walk ten minutes to a session with four literary agents. For most of the buchmesse, the agents are locked away in a sea of tables with security guards, so the authors can’t get to them. They’ve emerged to discuss the indie publishing scene and the ‘romantasy’ trend (this term is referred to all week, always with mild disgust). ‘We don’t use the word ‘author’ so much now,’ one agent says. ‘We see them as creators, storytellers. They’re building a fandom, just like social media influencers.’ A British agent agrees, saying, ‘We aren’t after shiny new debut authors. We are looking for creators with a fanbase.’ This, I imagine, will make the literary scene choke into their coffees.

Back at the New Zealand stand everyone is panicking that we’ll be serving warm beverages to the global elite. It’s 3pm, and still the wine hasn’t materialised. Dana and I escape to an international stand housing our American literary counterparts. An advance reader copy of Kill Dick, published by a small indie press, has been blurbed by Ottessa Moshfegh. ‘How’d you manage that,’ I ask the publisher. ‘She’s his wife,’ she replies in her American twang. I consider the subterfuge of this and flip the book over. Anna Delvey has blurbed the back. ‘She turned up to a media event wearing her prison ankle bracelet,’ the publisher shrugs without further explanation.

My WhatsApp flashes with a message in the NZ group Chat: Has the wine turned up yet

No, someone replies.  

‘You ladies going to any parties tonight,’ I ask.

‘Might drop by the New Zealand stand for a drink,’ the American publisher says. ‘They always have nice wine.’

‘Right now we have no wine,’ I say. ‘So you might need a plan B.’

But by 4pm the wine arrives and before long the stand is full of the global literary masses munching chips and slurping out of paper cups. The last copies of Folly are nabbed by the New Zealand Ambassador and an offshore printer who promises to get us a better print quote for Europe. Then we are introduced to a friendly old white man who is apparently a ‘very famous publisher’. He interrogates us for fifteen minutes, promises to get us an Australian distributor, then tells us he won’t offer us luck because ‘I don’t think you girls need it.’ We take this as a win and wander back to the hotel, past the police and several people covered in blood.

That night Folly features on the German television news, and for a mere few seconds Dana and I are caught mid performance with the Buchmesse punters closing in for their entertainment. That is after all, what good literature is all about.