204,399


Print copies sold of Paul Beatty’s Man Booker winner Te Sellout through the UK TCM to date


PAUL BEATTY


Booker winner Beatty set to draw Sellout book-fair crowd


Today, 5.00 p.m. ? Hall 5.1, B116


THE FRANKFURT AI CONFERENCE


Intelligence, squared


LAUNCH OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF UNIVERSITY PRESSES


Academic houses across the globe join forces


The sixth International Convention of University Presses (ICUP) is tomorrow, but you can whet your appetite with tonight’s launch/networking session/end of a busy FBF knees-up. ICUP was started so that such presses could exchange ideas about their somewhat niche place in the publishing ecosystem, tackling topics like how to compete with corporate conglomerates in the journals space, and looking at sustainable financial models. Topics at tomorrow’s half- day event will range from the modern-day nitty-gritty (improving workflow processes, efficiencies in distribution, new editing models) to a more long-term look at Open Access. Kicking it all off is a keynote on digital disruption by Michael Bhaskar above, co-founder of Canelo (not a university press, but hey ho).


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Tis year’s International Convention of University Presses is the sixth edition of the conference; in the past four years, more than 300 delegates have attended.


Artificial Intelligence is already well established in publishing—particularly in the scientific, technical and medical arena, where processes long done by human hands and brains are being automated. But we are still at the earliest stages of harnessing AI’s power. As the technology grows, what are the next


steps and the longer-term outlook? Will AI be able to predict bestsellers? (A German company, QualiFiction, is touting its software at this year’s fair claiming it can do exactly that.) Will the role of


the translator eventually be fully replaced by computers—heck, will


even the author’s? These, and many other weighty issues about the Age of the Machines, will be debated at FBF’s first AI


Conference. As part of the Arts+ stream, speakers will look at how AI will affect not just publishing but the wider creative community.


Today, 10.00 a.m.


? The Arts+ Salon, Hall 4.1 R55


GUEST OF HONOUR 2019: NORWEGIAN HOUR


Be our Guest: Georgia passes the baton to Norway


Today, 5.00 p.m. ? Frankfurt Pavilion, Agora


Today, 3.00 p.m. P ? Frankfurt Pavilion, Agora


aul Beatty, who in 2016 became the first US author to win the Man Booker


Prize, arrives at Frankfurt and he is certainly putting a shift in, with four events over the next two days, start- ing in the Frankfurt Pavilion today. Te Sellout was published by UK


indie Oneworld after it was turned down, as Beatty once said, “by every other British publisher”. (Oneworld's Booker winner in 2015, Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings, was similarly knocked back multiple


It is “nakhvamdis” to Georgia and “hei” to Norway as the Guest of Honour switches to the land of fords, whale meat, Harry Hole and Karl Ove Knausgaard right. (Although the My Struggle writer has upped stakes and moved to London.) But who needs Knausgaard?


Today’s event promises to be a litle less stuffy than the official handover ceremony on Sunday (in which there is a literal handing over of the Guest Scroll) or yesterday’s Norway 2019 Guest of Honour press conference. Four authors—Linn Ullmann, Tomas Espedal, Matias Faldbakken and Monica Isakstuen—will talk about the importance of opening lines in literature, aſter which, it is tantalisingly promised, there will be “enjoyment and drinks”. And it lasts until 9 p.m. Skål!


TheBookseller.com 13


times... there may be a lesson here.) Te Sellout's whip-smart satire of race relations in the US was perhaps deemed too “America”n for UK audiences, but the Booker boost has helped it to earn £2.2m through Nielsen BookScan to date. On Saturday, Beatty and fellow


American Meg Wolitzer combine for what is assuredly the headline for FBF's BOOKFEST, its consumer-facing series of events (“the festival after the fair closes” is the cooing tag-line). Te pair will appear at the English Teatre in the centre of Frankfurt to talk about “their literature and their writing, about politics and society”.


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