Frankfurt Book Fair 2025: Books as the Spine of a Bigger System
Each October, Frankfurt becomes the gravitational centre of publishing. For a few days, the Messegelände, a sprawl of glass, steel, and escalators transforms into a temporary city of ideas. It’s where culture meets commerce, and where the global publishing industry performs its annual ritual of renewal.
At Soi Books, we went to Frankfurt to do what we always do: listen, observe, and connect the dots between art, books, and the wider creative economy. What we saw this year confirmed what we’ve long suspected, the book is no longer the final product. It’s the spine of a much larger organism.
End of the day at Messe Frankfurt — the glass and steel entrance to the world’s largest book and rights fair.
Frankfurt as Trading Floor
Frankfurt isn’t retail, it’s a trading floor for ideas. You don’t buy copies here; you buy futures: translations, licenses, formats, territories. Editors, agents, producers, curators, museum presses, and game studios. Everyone’s running the same calculation: where does this story travel next, and what does it become on the way? Deals are struck in minutes, but the thinking spans years. The halls hum with talk of world rights, sub-agents, digital editions, streaming tie-ins.
The book fair isn’t just about publishing anymore, it’s where the global creative industries intersect.
Volume Down, Value Up
The latest numbers tell a familiar but uneasy story. Total European book market turnover in 2024 rose +2.2% year-on-year but not because more books were sold. The increase was driven largely by higher prices, not higher sales.
Inflation and production costs have pushed values up while actual volume continues to slide. Publishing remains Europe’s largest cultural industry, posting its highest-ever turnover in nominal terms. But beneath that surface, the story is more complex: fewer people are reading, and those who do are reading less.
A 2022 survey showed that 47.2% of Europeans aged 16+ didn’t read a single book. Among younger readers (16–29), nearly 40% read nothing at all. Reading rates rise with age and education, the opposite of what we might hope for in a digital world.
So yes, publishing is growing but partly because paper, ink, and logistics cost more. The audience itself is fragmenting.
Inside Hall 6 — a bird’s-eye view of the global publishing floor, from Canada’s pavilion to the endless aisles of rights meetings and design showcases.
From Books to Systems
At Soi Books, this is the lens we bring to Frankfurt. We’re not just looking for book deals; we’re looking at systems. The book remains our anchor, but the culture around it has splintered into dozens of new directions.
The conversations that mattered most this year weren’t about paper stock or print runs they were about rights, IP, and multi-format storytelling. Everyone’s talking about transmedia, though most don’t yet realise it’s already the default.
Publishers are catching up to what film, gaming, and music have known for years: audiences don’t live in one format anymore. They drift. They browse. They stream. They collect. They remix. The modern reader is a cross-platform participant.
That means the successful book today must already imagine its afterlives:
as a podcast or audio edition,
as a digital comic or Webtoon,
as a collectible object,
as a piece of IP that can extend into interactive, playable, or wearable worlds.
Books are no longer endpoints, they’re spines. The transmedia ecosystem that grows around them are the ribs that make the body move.
Why It Matters for Soi Books
Frankfurt confirmed what we’ve been quietly building toward. The traditional pipeline — idea → print → distribution — feels outdated. What’s needed now is a networked publishing model: small, agile, and artist-led.
Our model begins with the book as artefact, then branches outward. Every Soi title we do look to build and live across mediums: physical editions, collector versions, soundtracks, short films, podcasts, audio books and beyond.
That’s not trend-chasing; it’s ecosystem thinking. It’s how culture sustains itself when attention is fragmented and reading time is in decline. A book can still be sacred but it must also be alive.
One of our latest collaborations spotted at Frankfurt — The Esoterica Sticker Book published by Rizzoli Universe.
The Future of the Fair
The paradox of Frankfurt is that it’s both ancient and futuristic. It’s the last great analogue ritual of the publishing world — yet every conversation is about digital transformation. The fair’s real power lies not in its scale but in its choreography: the same people returning year after year, performing the act of belief that books still matter.
Our final takeaway from this year:
Transmedia is now the default lens. Books are the spine; games, Webtoons, audiobooks, podcasts, and licensing are the ribs.
The sacredness of publishing doesn’t vanish in the digital age, it changes shape. The book remains the ritual object at the heart of it all, carrying stories from one world into another.
Interested in more? Read our first Frankfurt Book Fair experience here → https://www.soibooks.com/stories/our-first-frankfurt-book-fair-experience
