Bologna Book Fair

This has been my first post in a number of weeks, this has been due to the workload I have had to get through in order to complete the course. From the 4th April until the 7th Bologna Book Fair was open. This was something I attended as I managed to gain free tickets by sending in five illustrations a number of months ago. Unfortunately the illustrations were not picked for display but I was never really expecting them to be anyway.
The book fair itself was huge with publishers from 42 countries in attendance. There were a few large illustrators areas, an area for german illustrators work, a digital area and four very large halls packed with publishers showing all of the latest books. Now I have been to the book fair I understand the purpose of the event. It is very industry based and comprises of each company having stalls of varying sizes where marketing people will discuss business deals with other publishers or industries linked with any aspect of books.
My initial idea was to attend this event with a copy of my dummy version of the picture book. However this is something I was unable to do as I could not send it off to print prior to leaving for Bologna. In all honesty I do not think this would have really worked well anyway. I seen many illustrators carrying their portfolios around with them and trying to talk to people at stands. But I also heard many of them getting explanations that they were not editors or people who decide who illustrates for them. This tactic did not seem to work very well as this is not what the event is about, it is a copyright selling event.
I went around the entire event looking for any works that may have been similar to mine in either style, themes or they way they were told. I managed to find one book that I bought which might be Korean. The book tells a story through an art gallery although many of the pieces or artists are very recognisable and each comes into the gallery space itself, I have no idea what the narrative is. There were no books that I found that dealt with similar issues or topics to mine, this does not mean that there were none I just couldn't find any. The same with the style used to create the picture book, I never seen any other books done in a similar fashion. At first I began to wonder if this was a good or a bad thing, thinking did I fit into this world or do I fit somewhere else. However now I have had time to reflect I feel that this is actually a good thing as it means that I may have something different to offer any potential publisher or employer. Attending such an event was very useful in gaining a better understanding of the industry as a whole and may be something I end up becoming involved with on a yearly basis. Some images from the event are shown below.