This is good news, but it became a conclusion – and then confirmed “K”– through disagreements between the Ministry of Culture and publishers’ associations on other, more specific space issues: Greece will be an honorary country BolognaBookPluscommercial department Bologna International Children’s Book Fairwhich will take place in March 2023. The proposal of the Italian organization was received, according to information, at the end of May and recently received a positive response from the Ministry of Culture, since in the meantime it was necessary to resolve financial and managerial issues regarding the participation of Greece in international exhibitions. The acceptance of the Italian proposal was announced yesterday, thanks to a response from the ministry to publishers’ associations, which on Monday expressed concern that, due to Greece’s participation in Frankfurt International Book Fair (19-23 October) there is a risk that the Greek book will turn out to be a “drift”.

Six publishers’ associations reported delays in organizing the Greek participation in Frankfurt, which this year was undertaken mainly by the Ministry of Culture and secondarily by the Hellenic Cultural Foundation. However, they also cited insufficient information from the ministry on issues such as the timing of the payment of amounts owed to foreign beneficiaries of translated Greek works (through the government’s Greek Literature Program), the ministry’s policy regarding legislation on the new book corpus, and finally preparations for the Bologna exhibition, whose invitation to Greece, in the opinion of the associations, was not officially communicated to them by the ministry. For the above reasons, the clubs have decided to withdraw their representatives from the planning of Greece’s participation in Frankfurt.

Conversation with “K”, President of the Hellenic Book Association and publisher of Ikaros Nikos Argyris notes that the clubs learned about the Bologna proposal from their Italian partners. Regarding participation in Frankfurt, he notes that they may stay away from planning, but “we will do our best to make the Greek presence successful”, and later, he added, they will seek a meeting with the leadership of the ministry. .

chronic problems

For her part, Anna Pataky of the eponymous publication emphasizes that issues such as the timely payment of amounts owed to foreign publishers under translation subsidy programs and the absence of a book operator are “chronological problems affecting all governments that have adopted”, while other editors believe that the Greek public administration is simply doing what it can.

In yesterday’s reply to the publishing associations, the Ministry of Culture stressed that they were informed of the details of the Greek presence in Frankfurt, that there was a written commitment regarding the amount of Greek literature, and that they were also notified of the participation of Greece in Bologna. will be discussed in detail at the meeting of Deputy Minister of Contemporary Culture Nicholas Giatromanolakis with Jax Thomas, guest director of BolognaBookPlus, and that the organization’s legislation regarding the book is in the planning of Parliament.

As for the Greek participation in Frankfurt, it includes a larger booth, a new visual identity and the participation of 27 publishers and organizations, while being framed by events around the translation axis. It is also the central theme of this year’s exhibition, which is also complemented by the presence of last year’s Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurn, actress and recent children’s book author Diane Kruger, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and others.