Zagreb Book Fair to go ahead.
The question whether the Zagreb Book Fair “Interliber” will be held at all this year has been circulating recently among Croatian publishers and writers. However, now it is certain that the fair will be held this year, but the organizers did have a contingency plan ready. The reason was that the Zagreb Fair, where Interliber has been taking place for years, began accommodating the refugees which were arriving to Zagreb and that has prompted the organizers to start thinking about other possible options. There was an unofficial plan for be book fair to be held in the Arena Sports Hall, in the event that the pavilions used for the fair were taken over by the refugees, reports Jutarnji List on September 25, 2015.
The Interliber has always been held in pavilions 5 and 6, but just five days ago pavilion 5 was being prepared to accept 1,000 refugees, in addition to pavilion 1 where they have already been housed. This information has been confirmed by Mišo Nejašmić, from the Jesenski & Turk Publishing Company, who is also the president of the Croatian Association of Publishers and Booksellers.
“Everything is fine now. There was a backup plan with regards to the refugees, since Interliber is scheduled to take place in just a month and a half, and of course we were discussing theoretical possibilities”, said Nejašmić. However, he did not want to talk about the specifics of their plan. “I do not want to speculate, particularly since right now it does not seem that the contingency plan will have to be used”, he said.
Neven Antičević from the Algoritam publishing company, who was previous president of the Association, has also confirmed that there was a backup plan because at one point it seemed that the Zagreb Fair will accommodate a larger number of refugees.
This has been a difficult year for Croatian publishers due to the economic crisis. However, Nejašmić said that, thanks to some creative solutions and a lot of imagination, they have succeeding in making some changes to the fair. They will also launch a new program, so called Scientific District, which is a major project that will take place in the special zone of the fair and will bring together science, books and children.
“The program is aimed at children and young people. Also, we have finally managed to settle the issue of cloakroom for visitors to the fair. One of the new ideas is so called Knjižider, where the visitors will be able to leave the books they have purchased so they do not have to carry heavy bags with them”, said Nejašmić.
Even though this year’s fair will offer the smallest number of new books since 2012, publishers will release some of their most interesting books during the fair.
