No country in the world has as many book fairs and literary meets as India. Claudia Kaiser would know. As vice-president of business development in Asia, Africa and the Arab World, she travels extensively on behalf of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

“Every city has its book event — Pune, Jaipur, Calcutta, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore...” she exclaims.

The Frankfurt Book Fair is the biggest book fair in the world and is a meeting place for publishers. “It is a B2B (business to business) affair, and not so much a selling fair. Retail sale takes place only in the weekends,” she tells The Telegraph Salt Lake on the sidelines of a reception hosted by the ambassador.

There are other points of difference as well with the Calcutta Book Fair, she points out. The Frankfurt fair lasts only for five days. “Since 1945, it has always taken place in October. About 100 countries are represented. There is an India stand as well, put up by the National Book Trust,” she points out.

Though it is an annual fair, the officials are at work round the year. “Our goal is to do the book fair and also support the publishing industry worldwide. We also visit different fairs to help publicise German publishers. We also travel extensively round the year to develop business opportunities and network,” she explains.

Kaiser is based out of Germany and Indonesia. “We had a book office in Delhi as well but it was shut down in 2021 during the pandemic,” she says.

Though Germany is being showcased as the theme country for the first time, this is not the first exchange between the two book fairs. “In fact, we were inspired by the Frankfurt Book Fair to start a book fair in Calcutta. We, as representatives of the local publishers, have been visiting them since 1974. It was after the first couple of visits that we founded our fair in 1976,” adds Tridib Chatterjee, president of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild. But covid put a brake on the visits in 2020.

Representatives of the Frankfurt Book Fair too have visited Calcutta several times. “The last time was 1997,” said Kaiser. That was the year the fair went up in flames.

But talks are on to renew ties, including resumption of the trip by Guild representatives to Frankfurt, starting this October.

“Our aim is to present German titles to Indian publishers and create more scope for exchange,” Kaiser says.