The forthcoming Frankfurt Book Fair is my fortieth. My first visit to the Frankfurt Book Fair was in 1959. I've been credited with having attended the first German Book Fair, but as this took place in the fifteenth century I have to say that it was just a little before my time. Frankfurt was a very different city in 1959, still with evidence of the ravages of World War II. I stayed in a small hotel by the station, and received a very favourable impression of the friendly nature of German girls who greeted me warmly with 'hello, English' every time I went in or out of the hotel. I believe that my stay there was the first time that the hotel had ever let a room for the whole night. I was, of course, entirely immersed in the world of the book. A note-book I have from about that time shows that the exchange rate was DM11.50 to £ 1, and the total expenses for my trip, including the plane fare, were £ 41.11s.9d ( £ 41.56p). The note-book also shows meetings with publishers with whom relationships were started that lasted over many, many years, some to this day, such as with the German military publishers Bernard & Graefe, and Motorbuch Verlag. In those days the Book Fair fitted into the single, white pillared building which is currently by the entrance gates, I believe nowadays used as an admissions hall. Beyond the white pillared building was a string of about a dozen World War II Nissen huts, used for publishers' exhibits. All around, as far as the eye could see and over the entire site which is now covered with exhibition halls, including the residential blocks at the far end of the current area of the Frankfurt Book Fair, was clear and covered with black clinkers, the result of the bombing raids by the Allies in World War II on the adjacent Frankfurt railway marshalling yards. My recollection of those days is that it was always raining. One moved from hut to hut through canvas tunnels, with duckboards underneath that squelched into the mud. The rain blew against the canvas of the tunnels, and it always seemed to be damp and chilly. There was a heavy metal door that had to be pushed open to go into the campus tunnel, and if the wind caught it, it would slam shut. I saw this happen and the reverberations knock down the Faber stand which was alongside the doorway. 'That's the third time it has happened', exclaimed an exasperated sales manager. When a few years later the Fair moved into the first, new generation building it was the high-ceilinged 'Halle Fünf', and this was extremely welcome. But the car park was across the cinders, and one always seemed to have to dash from the heated hall through hard driven and cold rain to get to the car. It was however a pleasure to return to this hall, now re-numbered Hall 8, a couple of years ago. The 1960s saw a series of student demonstrations and riots, sometimes with running fights in the streets of Frankfurt, the Fair grounds and even in the halls themselves. Eventually the authorities regulated the students who agreed to demonstrate only at certain times, those being the times and places where television cameras were. It became 'demonstration by television camera', and it was either this or the lack of passion for some of the events that the students were demonstrating for which saw a decline in protests. The demonstrations over the years ranged from South Africa, most frequently, to even the winner of the German book trade's Peace Prize who was a very distinguished and cultured black African, but his country had managed to upset somebody. One time I was in a taxi in downtown Frankfurt and we found a mass of students totally blocking the road. The taxi driver hurled a curse at them, and drove straight through the crowd with bodies banging alongside the taxi. It was in those days that the stand for the Israeli publishers had to be surrounded by armed guards with sub-machine guns. In one of those early days I do not believe that the sales manager I had with me had ever been abroad before, or if he had, he had not encountered a duvet. Over breakfast I asked if he had slept well, but unfortunately he had not. It turned out that he had been very uncomfortable, having unbuttoned the duvet and tried to sleep between the covers and the quilt. In my first years attending the Frankfurt Book Fair I stayed in small hotels in Frankfurt, and walked around the Fair visiting publishers rather than having a stand. As soon as Arms & Armour Press was established in the mid-1960s we had an exhibit, which meant having a car go to Frankfurt with books to display. Going by car meant being able to take one's books, but necessitated a carnet. Although books were not taxed, it was necessary to make a negative declaration. This meant having a document which detailed every book, which was a remarkably exacting typing job, because no errors were permitted, and it had to be done in six copies. There was only a very small amount of space in which to describe every title, even down to its weight, that was being taken over to the Frankfurt Book Fair and brought back, placing a deposit with the Chamber of Commerce as a guarantee that everything that went out would indeed go back. In addition it was absolutely essential that as one passed each customs point going out of one country and into the next, to get that customs authority place their stamp onto the documentation. Sometimes this entailed long delays. Sometimes this entailed stopping in some lonely customs depot in the middle of the night. And sometimes it was only when one reached the next customs depot that one realised that one had not secured the appropriate exit stamp, and had to go back. It never happened to my team, but we heard of people being turned back from entrance into France, because they hadn't received the correct British stamp of exit as they went onto a ferry, and having to shuttle back to get the documentation stamped. The customs officials were mostly uninterested in books, and there was no inspection which was good because the order of the books listed on the carnet was not matched by the positioning of the books in the cartons. One time on the journey home, however, having driven hard from a lunchtime close-down (which is sometimes described as being similar to the start of the Le Mans 24-hour race) at the Fair, across Germany and then Belgium, to a very late ferry and arriving even later in Britain, a very tired driver of the company car was told, very late at night (or perhaps early morning), the British customs officer wanted to check the contents. One could only agree, but possibly the customs officer was also tired for he stood at the front of the vehicle calling out titles from the carnet, and our man stood at the back, in the dark, holding up books the wrong way round and saying 'yes, its here'. The time that we certainly got the attention of a German customs officer was when in the typing of a couple of book titles they had been shortened from four copies of The Book of Automatic Rifles, etc., to '4 Automatic Rifles'. At that time we could not sell books from our stand at Frankfurt, which was extremely frustrating when cash was offered, because of the need to bring back the same books as one took out. We did in fact take a small number of wrappers and listed on the carnet 'book A', 'book B', and rejacketed in this fashion some books, but could only do so for a handful. Yes, using carnets was an entirely hideous, time-consuming, difficult bureaucratic problem. One of the great benefits of the European Union has been that carnets are not needed now to move goods from one country to another. At that time we could not sell books from our stand at Frankfurt, which was extremely frustrating when cash was offered, because of the need to bring back the same books as one took out. We did in fact take a small number of wrappers and listed on the carnet 'book A', 'book B', and rejacketed in this fashion some books, but could only do so for a handful. Yes, using carnets was an entirely hideous, time-consuming, difficult bureaucratic problem. One of the great benefits of the European Union has been that carnets are not needed now to move goods from one country to another. Having a car also freed me from staying in Frankfurt and I explored the environs and discovered the little village of Kronberg, in the Taunus mountains. This is a historic village, and I and my team have since often stayed in one of its small hotels. Over the years we have had to move about four or five times to different ones as they have closed, or been refurbished, but we are firmly established there and indeed have the pleasure of a number of overseas friends of ours staying with us. The advantage of Kronberg is that although one is staying in a fairly simple establishment, the little village is a pleasure to walk around, and every night we can walk out to a different fine restaurant. Kronberg seems to have a dozen or so top quality restaurants, and we believe in having an early but long, leisurely, and most enjoyable dinner together, with guests. If the guests do not have their own transportation they are instructed to report to our stand at 6.25pm promptly, we can then close down the stand, lock away the dummies, go straight to the car park and leave the fairground. If all goes well we can be back in Kronberg, to the peace and quiet, for 7pm or shortly thereafter, quicky freshen up, possibly have a drink, but be seated at a restaurant and ordering food before 7.30pm. We've heard of some people who have to wait until well into the evening in downtown Frankfurt before being able to eat; that's not for me. There have been many memorable dinners. One, a long time back, was when Peter Kindersley and I were seated together at a large dinner at the famous Buckenkeller in Frankfurt. He asked whether Dorling Kindersley should move from packaging into book publishing, thus building their own list. I advised 'what do you need all that trouble for? Why make all that additional investment, and take the risk? And of course you then have all the responsibilities for sales, marketing, distribution and so forth.' Needless to say he didn't accept this dinner-time advice. A more recent problem is the new German public holiday to celebrate the reunification. We discovered the hard way that carparks are locked on public holidays; we had left our car overnight and could not gain access the following morning which was the day of the holiday. Everywhere surrounding us was closed and there was no sign of life. Finally we saw a car using a special pass to enter the carpark and we hurled ourselves in the style of Indiana Jones under the descending shutters and into the carpark. We were fortunate that in order to drive out there was an automatic exit button. In fact I haven't been into downtown Frankfurt for possibly twenty years, and when the international publishers were exhibiting in Hall 4 and one could drive the car on to the roof-top carpark and go down to the second floor of the hall where one's stand was, there was possibly a period of seven or eight years when my feet did not even touch the ground of Frankfurt. 1984 was a special Fair, for the documents to sell Arms & Armour Press were signed by me late on the afternoon of the day before I travelled to Germany. We had agreed a news black-out until I could tell the news personally to the members of the team who had gone ahead, which I had to do as I came off the plane and was picked up by them. Thereafter news circulated with fascinating, remarkable speed. The editor of The Bookseller was however not happy, for he was trying to go to press early, from Germany, with the issue of the magazine which would be circulated at Frankfurt on that Saturday. We had a remarkable scramble to get the story of the sale of Arms & Armour Press to Link House (which included Blandford, which led a number of people to think that it was Blandford themselves who had taken over A&AP), and I was surprised at the reaction it caused. All sorts of members of the trade came to see me, usually with kind messages, and a couple even claimed go have known for months that the deal was in progress, well before it had even been thought of or started. The following year a similar situation occurred, for with Clive Bingley, my London Book Fair partner, I took over Lund Humphries Publishers (which might be another Tail Piece in due course). Again the transaction took place the day before I travelled to the Fair, for again I thought that it was an important deadline due to the long lead-in time discussions about projects at the Fair with one's overseas colleagues and associates, and one needed to know where one stood in having such discussions. This time the news about the takeover circulated ahead of me and when I eventually arrived at the Frankfurt stand to help set it up there was an urgent - but urgent! - message to see the editor of The Bookseller. He was extremely anxious to get the story into that week's magazine, and, from his viewpoint, we were making deals at the worst possible time in his scheduling. 'Sorry, Louis' I had to tell him, 'I cannot arrange these matters according to the publishing schedule of The Bookseller'. Anecdotes about the Frankfurt Book Fair abound, but most are centred on specific projects that one happens to be working upon at the time, and the comradeship of meeting friends in the trade year after year. Sometimes it seems as though one picks up conversations uninterrupted from one year to the next. Three Fairs – 1989, 1990 and 1991 – were especially memorable because of business with the Moscow publishing house Planeta. The 1989 Fair saw the start of what became the sensationally successful book Soviet Wings. The next Frankfurt saw the book ready for co-edition publication, where we achieved in a few hectic days what might have taken months of sending things by mail. The book was published for the 1991 Fair, but in the meantime the world's political scene had moved on, peace had finally been established, and when the Soviet negotiating team sat down with us and we all congratulated ourselves on a very successful project, they asked 'What would you like next, Mr Leventhal? We would be able now to produce a project (a considerable sum of money had been paid in royalties) on nuclear submarines..'. However, I had to respond that peace was not good for military publishing, and to our regret there was less interest than before in Soviet military equipment. We nevertheless planned a celebratory dinner, held in Kronberg, and I invited an American publisher who had some knowledge of Russian and also a specialist interest in intelligence. This was that gentleman's first-ever Frankfurt Book Fair, and as he was an 'upfront' guy he mentioned at the start of the dinner that his Russian was a little rusty, but the last time he had heard it was when he was in Berlin and American intelligence had succeeded in tapping the Rusian military telephone lines and he was one of the listeners. This was not a diplomatic thing to say, especially as the then Russian commercial structure was obviously part of the Soviet apparatus, and for us to have got the remarkable material that made Soviet Wings meant that we were dealing with people who either had a past history somewhere in Soviet power, who probably still had significant connections or who were still involved. The temperature at the dinner table dropped. Dropped well below zero. The Soviet team leader exploded, and started shouting at us. His interpreter stopped translating. There was a period of hideous embarrassment before we could change the conversation, unfortunately cutting our American friend out of it, and a subdued dinner ensued. By the end of it, following the consumption of much excellent German beer, a form of normalty was in place and we parted with bear hugs. I think that less deals are made nowadays, on the spot at any rate. Possibly this is because the Fair is only one, but a very important, part of ongoing liaison with those with whom one does business. Or maybe the nature of my publishing has changed along with the overseas associates with whom we collaborate. I certainly recall far more deals being made on the spot yesteryear than today. One major transaction, made with a handshake, was at the 1973 Fair when I displayed the dummy of a large format, colour book entitled Butterflies of the World. I had conceived the idea of bringing co-edition, colour techniques to works of reference, and although a beautiful volume it was scientifically valid, based upon the unique Natural History Museum collection in South Kensington, and showed 5,000 specimens. An American publisher seeing the dummy and reading the specification committed to a $100,000 purchase and in fact this led to a single, very large co-edition also being taken, for simultaneous printing, for publishers in Germany, Spain, France, Japan and I believe a couple of other countries. In the event, nothing that was in the dummy, the pages or its cover, was part of the finished and very successful book. But that's Frankfurt. Another made-on-the-spot-deal was in 1976 with a new packager, Sidney Mayer, a somewhat larger than life American who has recently set up Bison Books in London. He had prepared The Encyclopdia of Infantry Weapons of World War II by Ian V. Hogg. The book was a natural 'fit' with my Arms & Armour Press, and we both saw the natural price point at £ 4.95 (those were the days!). Working on the mark-up formula that I needed, I pressed for a reduction of a half penny. But Sid couldn't agree. There was an impasse, and it looked a though the deal might fall through. Doing some lateral thinking, and considering his somewhat piratical way of doing business, I suggested 'let's toss for it'. We did, and I'm glad to say that I won. But it was only afterwards that it was pointed out that I had tossed a coin for £ 45, something that I would never conceive of doing in the real world. But I cannot recall deals like these in recent years, just solid and continuing relationships. At and around the Fair there are parties of every shape, style and size. They are held on stands at the Fair, or at hotels and restaurants. We have had parties on the stand, the most recent being a surprise birthday party for Mark Wray, our sales manager, and, last year, a special celebration for the 70th birthday of Edward Coffey from Australia. Amongst memorable receptions that I remember was one hosted by a Canadian publishing friend. This was to be held at his stand, and I went over and joined the crowd, nodded to several folk I met, and admired and much enjoyed the wonderful canapes and good wine that they were offering. When I looked around for my host however, to compliment him on the marvellous and generous spread, I realised that neither he nor any of his colleagues were there. After a little pause, to enjoy another scrumptious canape, I realised that I was at the wrong event. The event to which I had been invited to was further down the same gangway at the Fair, and I duly had to make my excuses and go over to it. Fortunately, because of their lack of edibles, I had already enjoyed myself. A French publisher once visited our stand with some handsome books, full of glorious paintings of battles. He could only speak French, and as an aside I asked one of my marketing colleagues, 'how come the French have such wonderful military art, but have never won a war?' Like magic, the publisher declared in English, 'You are not interested in these books', grabbed them up and departed hastily! One is often asked how to evaluate the importance of the Frankfurt Book Fair. In terms of measuring the book fairs of the world, Frankfurt would occupy the top five places of any 'book fair top ten' listing. Having made so many visits over so many years the inevitable question one is asked upon one's return is usually whether it was a good fair, and how does it compare to previous fairs, and which was the best Frankfurt Book Fair. Another question is 'does it all become repetitive, and does one reinvent the wheel periodically?' I have to say that each year seems to be the best year ever. Each year is stimulating and there is something new and different (over the last few years it has been the reopening of the countries of Eastern Europe, and licensing books to the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and the old Soviet Union) and hence it is never repetitive or boring. If my first visit to the Frankfurt Book Fair was forty years ago, I look forward to another possible forty years and do not see electronic means of communication in any way replacing the need to get together in person. In 1959 I made my first visit to the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of a handful of British publishers and certainly the first for the publishing house I was then working for. Two years later I made my first visit to the United States, and was involved in establishing the co-edition market for non-fiction books. But that's another story. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 93 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com