Audience engagement and reading promotion in European Book Fairs Aldus invited European Book Fairs to tell about their initiatives and collaborations in the field of audience engagement and reading promotion, by answering some questions: What are the most interesting and original initiatives organized by your Book Fair to engage readers and to contribute to reading promotion? Currently, does the Book Fair collaborate with other organizations engaged in literature and reading promotion, such as Literary festivals? This report provides an overview of the wide offer of initiatives developed by Antwerp Book Fair, Bologna Children's Book Fair, Bucharest Book Fair, Frankfurt Book Fair, Goteborg Book Fair, Lisbon Book Fair, London Book Fair, Più Libri Più Liberi, Riga Book Fair, Sofia Book Fair, Tempo di Libri, Thessaloniki Book Fair, Vienna Book Fair, Vilnius Book Fair. Antwerp Book Fair The Antwerp Book Fair promoting reading is the biggest happening in the field of books in Flanders. Every year the fair attracts over 100 exhibitors, mainly book publishers and booksellers, and more than 150.000 visitors. The fair is open to the general public for twelve days and two evenings until ten o’clock. Visitors pay a small entry fee to enter and enjoy all activities. Thousands of recently published books are at display and can be purchased. But more than a giant bookstore, the Book Fair is a melting pot of authors, illustrators and booklovers. They annually meet here to present and discover the new books. Key initiatives can be classified as follows: Author’s Programme: Authors and illustrators are offered five stages on which they can introduce their books to the public. In discussions, debates, workshops, reading sessions, quizzes, live shows and movies the reader discovers new insights and books. The stages attract the individual visitor as well as groups of school children, reading circles, hobby clubs, library clients and professional book workers. Acts are open to all visitors of the Book Fair, and they can walk in and out freely during the performances as the different stages are embedded in the actual fair halls. Every year there are over 200 acts, often drawing a full house. For this programme, the Fair has the support of all publishing houses and regularly collaborates with cultural associations that enable us to invite foreign authors. The author’s programme is widely spread (and visited) on websites and in the media. News about the Book Fair is daily covered by all major television and radio stations, as well as all newspapers and a many magazines. Thus, the Book Fair is stimulating books and reading enormously. School programme: for schools that want to visit the Book Fair with classes, a special programme is developed. The steering committee behind this programme consists of organizers of the Fair, government organizations on education and reading promotion and institutes for teachers’ education. Together they design different routes through the book fair. All routes have the same central theme which changes yearly. Each route is adapted to children of a certain age. It may be emphasizing on a certain book genre. All routes enable groups to stroll for one and a half hour, stopping at points of interest for specific groups. Authors for children and young adults are seated along the routes. They may be seated at the stand of their publisher or of an organization they support. They may lead short workshops or creativity sessions with the schoolchildren. The programme is constructed in close collaboration with the exhibitors at the Fair. Students following a teachers’ education help with the development of the tours and escort the groups through the fair. All school groups receive material to prepare their visit to the fair. This material can be used during the weeks after the visit to the Book Fair. Every year, between 5000 and 7000 children experience this special visit to the Book Fair. Additionally in 2016 a mobile app was developed to guide individual teenagers through the fair. Like in a virtual treasure hunt the app took them to interesting stands where they had to perform short book related assignments (answer a question, take a picture, make a small puzzle,…) to unlock the next instruction. Antwerp Book Fair Schoolprogramme The Great Eight-project: in November 2016 the Book Fair launched the ‘Prachtige 80’ project (Literally translated: the Great Eighty), in collaboration with their partner Radio 1. Fair visitors and radio listeners started the search for the best book written during the last 80 years from a ‘shortlist’ of 80 books, selected by Flemish bookshop keepers (who are Book Fair members). They were asked to send to the Book Fair their top 3 of literary masterpieces accessible for light-readers as well, since they were the intended target audience. This list was transformed into an online competition where everyone could vote for their favourite book and win a fabulous vacation to Cuba, thanks to the Book Fair sponsor TUI. At the same time, Antwerp Book Fair had some side projects to promote the vote. Two Book Battles live were organised at the Fair: two times five ambassadors came to present their favourite book of the list and tried to convince the other ambassadors and the audience why their book deserved the title ‘The Greatest of the Eighty. Leaflets were distributed at the bookshops, together with a big online promotion as well with newsletters, online advertising, social media posts,… At the same time Radio 1 made a lot of publicity for the competition on their website, and of course, on air. They had guests talking about their favourite books, and there was a countdown to the big final, a live broadcast from the Book Fair on the last day, with live music, guests, and the revealing of the number one book chosen by the public. At the end these events gathered many competition entries (9796!), a well-received radio broadcast, big press response and a sublime winner: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The reading promotion at the Antwerp Book Fair is part of a large reading promotion campaign, supported by the Flemish Minister of Culture. Bologna Children's Book Fair The Bologna Children’s Book Fair is a trade only event and thus the reading promotion activities are not developed either within or during the Fair. For a few years the Fair organized a special weekend event following the exhibition’s days, including a huge international bookshop and an rich programme of workshops, shows and authors meetings. In 2017 the Fair decided to support the public programme in the city centre, that has now a quite long tradition: specifically in connection with the Premio Strega Ragazzi e Ragazze, the authors selected for the shortlist were involved to meet classes at their schools. According to the Fair, this Award definitely represents their commitment for reading promotion: they contributed to create the children’s and young adults’ section of the most important Italian literary prize which they believe will be crucial in bringing young readers’ literature into the spotlight. Besides, students are actively involved in the process since they are the final judges of the winners and the results are really beyond expectations: schools in Italy have created blogs and forums for discussions and Facebook pages where they report their reading experiences, a virtuous circle growing over time. Premio Strega Ragazze e Ragazzi in the schools Besides this, the Fair has organized a book exhibition (The Extraordinary Library) and brought the Illustrations Exhibition in a Museum right after the Fair days. The programme of events in the city centre extended over a longer period than the Fair itself and include many different events organized by public institutions, associations and companies that deal with reading promotion, literacy and literature, art and illustration: illustration and book exhibitions, readings, authors meeting, workshops, shows and movies literally invaded the city. Among these projects there is also “Facce da Libro”, a special calendar of appointments organized by the Italian Publishers Association where authors meet student classes in their local library. The programme is organized by the City of Bologna and BolognaFiere, owner of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Collaborations with other organisations involved in reading promotion include the one with the Turin Book Fair (Salone del Libro di Torino), an event devoted to the public, in the form of contributions with some contents developed at the Fair in Bologna. For instance, In 2017 a special category “Children’s on Art” of the BolognaRagazzi Book Award generated a book exhibition and a series of presentations that were extremely successful in Turin. Besides, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair started a collaboration with the Hay Festival: they will include in their calendar some winning authors of the BolognaRagazzi Book Award. This cooperation will extend on the special edition of the Hay Festival in Aahrus (Denmark) next autumn, where the Bologna Children’s Book Fair will organize activities on children’s books. Being the Bologna Children’s Book Fair a professional event though, they also cooperate with international reading promotion organizations, specifically with IBBY – International Board on Book for Young People. This successful cooperation started many years ago and the Fair now represents an important occasion for IBBY activities: a meeting of the board takes place in Bologna every year and they also organize their annual press conference where they announce the winners of the H.C. Andersen Award. In 2017 the first IBBY European Regional Conference “Bridging Worlds Reaching out to Young Refugees with Books and Stories” was organized during the Fair. The Bologna Children’s Book Fair is also a founding member of the Italian IBBY section. Bucharest Book Fair The Bookfest International Bookfair is one of the most important annual events that promote reading in Romania.