October has always been one of the most important months for the whole publishing business – it’s the time of Frankfurt Book Fair. This year, the fair took place on 14th-18th October (although if you were to believe the temperature outside, you could say it was late November!). Apart from traditional booths, visited by thousands of guests, feasting their eyes on book covers from all over the world, the fair was also filled with various lectures and conferences on different aspects of the book trade.

For our agency, it is an annual time for summaries and chasing new trends and bestsellers, and, naturally, for meeting with publishers and agents, both new, potential clients, as well as those we consider good friends – we feel very lucky that all of our clients are such great people. Meeting them – quite often for drinks after the fair :) – is always a boost of energy!

Of course, we must also remember that it was two years ago, in Frankfurt, that Macadamia was officially launched! Proud and emotional, we simply had to take a picture of our birthday muffin, just like last year – this way confirming the muffin’s status as our new tradition :)
[edit: We were so happy that we found this conveniently located (at arms level) banner of FBF and so tired after the whole day of meetings that we quickly took a photo of our muffin and headed for drinks. Only later did we realize that it’s an ad for the next year FBF. Some may say – Macadamia – the agency of the future ;)]

You would be wrong to think that we had time to relax after coming back from Frankfurt – the following day, early morning on Saturday, we travelled to Cracow, to conduct a lecture for participants of the creative writing course. We met a group of very interesting and promising authors, and told them about the basic rules of approaching editors and agents and shed some light on the first stage of their search for a publisher.

After a rainy Saturday, we woke up to a perfectly sunny Sunday, which we spent in a picturesque town of Dobczyce. We really needed this moment to relax, as our next day was packed with meetings with publishers residing in Cracow. It was great to spend some more time with each publisher (unlike during fairs, when you are usually limited to 30 minutes)!

Frankfurt, Cracow, creative writing course – we really hope that both publishers and our authors and clients will soon see the positive effects of this October madness.