I don’t know about you, but book fairs are one of my biggest weakness.
Living in a country where English books are pretty expensive and foreign literature is a rarity, book fairs are great opportunity for me to get cheap books and explore new types of books. In my country, there are two famous annual book fairs that are anticipated: Big Bad Wolf book sale and Indonesia International Book Fair (IIBF).
Big Bad Wolf is literally a discounted books book fair, where the books sold can be discounted up to 80%. If I’m not mistaken, BBW is also held in other SEA countries such as Malaysia and Philippines; in Indonesia, due to its popularity, it’s held twice a year despite in different cities. Meanwhile IIBF often collaborates with other country with a specific theme, thus allowing me to know more about the countries literature and writers. I mean, sure, the final cost might be expensive, but it doesn’t diminish the wonders of browsing through rows and rows of books, as well as getting to know more things about literary and publishing.
But what about other countries? What if you plan a trip abroad on a certain time and want to know what book fair might be held at that time? Worry not, because KOTOBEE has compiled a list of international book fairs from around the world. The list is divided by continents, so it’s easy if you want to hop on a train or an airplane and schedule your trip around the fairs. The closest one is Warsaw Book Fair on May 23-26, and the most anticipated book fair in the bookish world, Book Expo America (BEA) also will happen this month!
I’m going to stay in Singapore for my internship during the Summer, so of course I had to consult this list. Unfortunately, there is no book fair at that time but there’s one in Malaysia, so we’ll see whether I can make the trip of not 😆 There are so many fairs I want to go to, mainly anything that involves rare books and young adult! KOTOBEE also created some infographics divided by months, so it will make it easier for you to look around 💙
Thank you to the team at KOTOBEE for compiling this list! The infographic and information belongs to KOTOBEE.
Did you see your country on your list? Is there any fairs you are going to come to? Or is there any dates coincides with your trip?
The Literary Huntress 
Fantastic post!!! Thank you!
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Thanks for reading! 🙂
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I love that you’ve put this all in one place! I’d love to visit some of these one day.
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Thanks for reading, Tracy! I know right? So many interesting book fairs, I wish I could visit them all.
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There are actually quite a few of those boekenfestijn ones around the netherlands and Belgium over the year. Not just Nieuwegein in February. Also they aren’t too amazing anymore #oops. I’d suggest the big book market/fair that is in Deventer every August that has over 800 stands with marked down books (new and second-hand) if people want to got one in the Netherlands. Also the Antwerp book fair is also from 6-11 november. 🙂
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Thanks for the recommendation and addition, Annemieke 🙂 The Deventer fair sounds like heaven for readers!
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Brazil is not really in this list, but I checked the website and they have information about the biggest one going on this year, which is great! My city hosts this big fair every two years; for one year it happens in São Paulo (where I live), for the next year happens it happens in Rio. This book fair is huge and definitely one of my favorite events that I anticipate all year long. Sometimes, even international authors are invited and though the lines are huge, I always think it’s nice we can get books signed even living all the way down here, hahah. Another literary event happening in a couple months is called Flipop. It only happens in Sao Paulo and it’s a much smaller event, but a couple years ago, they invited Alwyn Hamilton and Benjamin Alire Saenz to do a talk and sign books and it was truly amazing! Even though we don’t have BEAs or such, it’s still nice when we can get these events around here too.
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Ooh that sounds really fun! I wish my fairs could invite authors too- I guess they do, but since the fairs usually in partnership with specific countries, the authors that come are from that particular country. I wish we could have some book signings even too ahaha!
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This is such a creative post, wow! I had never heard of book fairs before this, especially since I live in the U.S. and books are fairly commonplace. I love your resourcefulness and dedication to pursuing your passion – and I wish “book festivals” were more of a thing here! ❤
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