Puntoaparte Publishing and LatinLover Publishing, Colombia

I was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1976. After finishing undergraduate studies in Literature and Engineering, I toured the local rock scene with a band called Ultrageno. By the time it broke up around 2002, I had decided to become a creative entrepreneur, as I realized that my country was filled with lots of talented people whose only fault was their lack of management skills. By 2005, I decided to found Puntoaparte Publishing. Even though Colombia does not have a strong reading tradition, I managed to create some continental buzz, enough to win the British Council's International Young Publishing Entrepreneur Award in 2009.

Lately, I have been studying the digital book phenomenon and building an e-book imprint called Latinlover Publishing. It will sell digital books about Latin America. This pitch helped me win the Ardila Lulle scholarship, which enabled me to develop Latinlover during my stay at Georgetown University. I hope that the Fellowship Programme will help me learn more about e-books and establish a fertile network of contacts and friends.

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Editions Actes Sud, France

I worked as Director of Foreign and Audiovisual Rights at ActesSud for almost twelve years (from November 1998 to February 2011).As I felt it was time for a change (and after a 5-month family break in India), the same publishing house offered me the position of editor. I am currently in charge of part of the foreign fiction Iist as well as editor of a series called "Thesaurus", which brings together works of the most prominent authors we publish (Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Nina Berberova, Paul Nizon, lngeborg Bachmann, etc.)I continue to be responsible for audiovisual rights for the ActesSud catalogue.

I am currently preparing a programme for the two upcoming years for the series "Thesaurus" and looking for outstanding authors from Australia and New Zealand.I am also working as a translator from Spanish (Javier Cercas) and from German (Wilhelm von Humboldt).

For over 30 years, ActesSud has been an independent publishing house dedicated to high-quality fiction and non-fiction with a strong international emphasis. We also publish fine illustrated books in the fieIds of photography, art, horticulture, as well as children's books, theatre, music, biography and philosophy. We have a series called "Sindbad" dedicated to Arab literature and another, "Errance", devoted to ancient history.

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Groupe Homme, Canada (fr.)

Having studied literature in France, I decided to work in Rights and combine my two passions for literature and for other cultures, working first as an assistant in Paris, London and Munich. In the last years I have had the chance to work at Éditions du Seuil and for the illustrated list of Place des Éditeurs in Paris. Two years ago I moved to Montreal to join Groupe Homme, happy to discover Québec and its specific and dynamic book market.

Groupe Homme is Québec's largest publisher and is also very present in France. We publish a large range of non-fiction titles, from reference books to current affairs to cookbooks, with an accent on psychology and self-help.Our sister company VLB, which I also represent, publishes poetry, literary and historical novels, academic and popular non-fiction.

I look forward to participating in the Frankfurt Fellowship and exchanging our views and experience on the challenges of the industry - and developing a strong network of international connections.

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Larousse, Brazil

I started to work in the publishing field in 1998 as a rights assistant. In 2009, I was invited to work as an editor at Larousse.Larousse is now an imprint of Editora Lafonte, a company that belongs to Grupo Escala. We have the option to publish all titles by Larousse France and we are now working in order to extend our catalogue by including fiction titles in our list. Larousse is very well known for publishing reference and culinary titles. In Brazil, we also publish a lot of good music biographies. Our goal for the following years is to get more specialised in publishing fiction and self-help titles.

The fellowship will be a big opportunity to learn more about the German market. The publication of German authors in Brazil is increasing and it is important to be part of it. Fortunately, I already have had the opportunity to work with some German authors, however, there is still a lot of authors to discover and make known in Brazil.

Finally, my main interests regarding the Frankfurt Fellowship and the Frankfurt Book Fair are to get to know more people from the industry, exchange information and acquire rights of good books that fit the Larousse (Editora Lafonte) catalogue.

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KidsCan, Canada (engl.)

I've been at Kids Can Press for nearly 12 years, starting in Rights and Licensing but quickly moving on to the editorial side of things, where I've been at home ever since. I currently work as a senior editor, focusing primarily on picture books and licensed character brand development and management.

A central player in the development of the children's book industry in Canada since 1975, Kids Can Press takes pride in creating books that engage, delight and encourage a lifelong love of reading, and has earned a stellar reputation at home and abroad for its award-winning books. International rights sales have long been a focus, and increasingly Kids Can Press has been looking to the world market for licensing opportunities.

As much as I'm focused on bringing the best of Canadian children's literature to readers in North America and abroad, I'm also keen to introduce our North American audience to the best of international children's literature, and I look forward to discovering exactly that - and more! - at Frankfurt.

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Edições BestBolso / Grupo Editorial Record, Brazil

I started working for Grupo Editorial Record as a trainee, in 1993, even before graduating in the Publishing School. Nowadays, I am the coordinator of Record´s pocket imprint named Edições BestBolso, publishing 60 new mass market paperback editions per year. This product line is based on a catalogue of classics and best-selling titles by authors like Albert Camus, Graham Greene, Rudyard Kipling, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, John Steinbeck, Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scott Turow, which have already been published by Grupo Record as trade editions. I love the mix BestBolso publishes and these new editions give a new life to authors and backlist titles.

Grupo Editorial Record was founded 69 years ago, and owns an extensive catalogue of 4,000 titles and has twelve imprints. All the titles are published in Portuguese Language for distribution only in Brazil.

Since I visited the Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time I have been planning to apply to the Frankfurt Fellowship Programme. In 2008, I attended the Stanford Professional Publishing Course. Now I would like to know more about the German market as a whole, specially the publishing houses that have pocket collections in their catalogue. We have much to learn from the German publishers expertise in this field in which Brazil is still struggling. The Frankfurt Fellowship Programme and the Frankfurt Book Fair are rare opportunities for meeting the world´s publishers and learning from their experience.

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Book House, Egypt

A mother of three and a publishing house manager, I knew my passion was books when I started my career 20 years ago as a translator. Crafting sentences in Arabic, the language I cherish for its richness, was a pleasure. Bridging cultures and transferring new ideas through books was an extra pleasure. Four years ago, I moved into the publishing business to fulfil the passion and the experience.

I found myself drawn to books related to women and children. My first ground-breaking book was one about hijab (headscarf) styles. Being a Muslim woman wearing hijab, I found satisfaction in helping other Muslim women to add a touch of beauty to their dress code. The book was a huge success in both Islamic and other countries.

When it comes to my hobbies, I am more of a child than a grown-up. Like children, I enjoy clay modelling, colouring, and cutting and pasting.

I am excited about the Frankfurt Fellowship. Meeting people from other cultures and finding ways to collaborate, understand and learn from each other will be a pleasure added to my life.

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HarperCollins Publishers India, India

I graduated from Jadavpur University and Oxford University with degrees in English and then interned with IB Tauris in London. My summer there convinced me that I wanted to go into publishing. I joined HarperCollins India as an editorial assistant in 2008 and am now senior copy editor and also look after rights. I love all kinds of fiction and non-fiction and am especially interested in commercial fiction and non-fiction, a relatively untapped market in India.

HarperCollins India is one of the biggest trade publishers in India, dedicated to building a list of contemporary Indian writers. We publish about 120 books a year, covering adult fiction, non-fiction, illustrated and recently young adult. We also have a growing list of original and translated books in Hindi.

The Indian trade book market is a young, growing market that has much to offer international publishers and I hope to make a contribution to this. The Fellowship also offers an exciting opportunity to meet other publishers, find solutions to common concerns, and make new friends.

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Libros del Asteroide, Spain

I was born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 1972. I studied Law and an MBA, and I have been working in publishing since the year 2000. I worked for Planeta, the biggest Spanish publishing company for four years before founding Libros del Asteroide, an independent and literary Spanish speaking publishing company established in Barcelona in 2005. Since then Libros del Asteroide has published over ninety books and has been awarded with several prizes, the National Prize for the Best Publishing Work given by the Spanish Ministry of Culture (2009) among them.

Asteroide publishes 15 to 20 titles of international literature a year, mostly fiction; we have published titles translated from fifteen different languages. Our list includes authors like: Wallace Stegner, William Maxwell, John Steinbeck, Nancy Mitford, Maurice Druon, Jose Cardoso Pires, or Angel Wagenstein. I work as general manager and editor.

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Grupo SM, Spain

Born in Madrid in 1970, I graduated in Geography and History from Madrid University (Universidad Autónoma) and in History of Art and Archaeology from Poitiers University, where I also got a Postgraduate Certificate (DEA) in History and Civilisations. After finishing these studies, I followed a postgraduate course in Advanced Studies in Publishing (Oxford Brookes University) and worked during two months as a trainee at Alianza Editorial. Then I joined Ediciones SM, where I have been working for almost 14 years as a children's books editor.

Since 1997, I have worked closely with the Editor in Chief creating the young children's catalogue of Ediciones SM (toddlers and first readers publications), publishing more than 100 titles per year and creating a large catalogue over the years.
I have a broad experience in creating editorial projects and in working with authors and illustrators as well as in dealing and joining international co-editions and working directly with printers based in China in order to develop our own editorial projects.Ediciones SM is a company founded in Spain during the decade of the 40s of the last century. It began by publishing school books and during the 70s it became one of the most important children's books publishing houses in Spain. Nowadays, Grupo SM is an international group with publishing houses in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Puerto Rico and Spain.

I am mainly interested in children's books but I feel a great interest for every publishing field (especially non-fiction) and I am very curious about Asia-Pacific and ANZAC countries' publishing sectors and their markets, as I am familiar with the European and American publishing sectors. I am also interested in the German market - as it is one of the most important markets in the world (three times the Spanish) - and I am grateful to have the chance to have a first-hand look of this market.

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Cassava Republic Press, Nigeria

I came into publishing by default when I moved from the UK to Nigeria to take up an academic post at the end of 2003. I was surprised that despite the renewed interest in African writing internationally many of the new Nigerian authors were either not known or available in Nigeria. Also, I realised that despite the size of the country, publishing was largely focused on education texts; fiction and creative non-fiction were almost exclusively in the hands of self-publishers, except for one or two very small publishers. I wanted to make books by African authors available and also discover new authors locally. With no knowledge of publishing or business, the Internet became my greatest teacher and mentor as I set to work with my partner Jeremy Weate to set up Cassava Republic Press in 2006.

We bought rights from international publishers and also began the process of discovering new authors and working with them.We produce high-quality fiction, non-fiction and children's books that are rooted in the African experience in all its diversity, whether set in filthy-yet-sexy megacity of Lagos, in little-known rural communities, in the recent past or in the near future. As the publisher of a small company, I am responsible for rights acquisition, developmental editing and our marketing strategy. I have just initiated two new imprints, which will be fully launched in 2012 - on romance and a separate children's list. I am most excited about the children's list because I am spearheading it and we have some fantastic plans for it.

I am thrilled about the Frankfurt Fellowship opportunity because I feel that for the first time, I can glimpse the internal workings of a publishing house in a developed economy and learn from their operational processes, however fleetingly. I also welcome the opportunity to connect and forge relationships with my contemporaries in other markets for future opportunities; learn and share experiences about right's sales and acquisitions, understand in more depth the challenges others face in their market and find out how they work with and manage authors.

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Dook Publishing co Ltd., China

I was born in 1977 in Qingdao, China. After I graduated from Tsinghua University, I became an editor in the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. However, I always preferred trade publishing to the education sector. In 2009, I joined Dook Publishing to help it to select international titles. I read almost everything, and I am especially interested in making things; I am also keen about Buddhism and Taiji.

Dook Publishing was founded in 2006, and its founders have had selling experiences of RMB 50 trillions worth of fast moving consumer goods. So they adapted their experiences to the selling of books, and raised the concept of "selling books like toothpaste". Dook's average sale number of all published books is more than 200 thousand copies per ISBN, which is 33 times the average sales number of the industry.

What we are now searching for worldwide are "Classics of Classics", both in fiction and non-fiction. The Fellowship is a great opportunity to get to know international publishers, so I could dig out as many classics as possible; and I also want to share with international publishers what I know of Chinese publishing.

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Baltos Lankos Publishing House, Lithuania

I joined the Baltos Lankos publishing house in parallel with my studies of philosophy and business and marketing. Now, being 27 and living in my native city Vilnius (Lithuania), I hold the position of foreign rights manager, as well as I advise our editor-in-chief in publishing issues.

In Baltos Lankos, all publishing processes - from new book selection to marketing and distribution - are very important and interesting to me. Established in 1992 as an editorial office of a magazine, Baltos Lankos is now among the biggest publishing houses in Lithuania. Among our publications, there is fiction by Lithuanian and foreign authors, historical and psychological literature, academic books on humanities and social sciences, text books, illustrated children's books and many others.

I am sure the Frankfurt Fellowship Programme will be a good opportunity for me in establishing new valuable contacts with the publishing professionals from abroad as well as sharing experience and discovering new opportunities for cooperation, together with finding out more about the leading German book market.

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Editions Flammarion, France

After three years as Instructor Supervisor for a language school in Paris, I decided to change course and follow my heart. A short-term assignment a few years previously for McGraw-Hill in London had given me my first taste of the publishing industry, and so I applied for a professional accelerated course for careers in the book trade, with the aim of working for a French publishing house.

During this course, I obtained an internship at Editions Flammarion and discovered the world of illustrated books - I have been there ever since.During my six/seven years at Flammarion, I have acquired experience in both the editorial and international rights sectors, specializing in illustrated books and their adaptation into foreign-language editions. I have a particular interest in the editorial and production aspects of international co-editions, and a penchant for photography and lifestyle titles.

Editions Flammarion was founded in 1876, and today is the fourth largest French-language publishing group (Groupe Flammarion). Pursuing the founder Ernest Flammarion's main objective, Flammarion aims to render all fields of knowledge accessible to the general public. The group comprises several prestigious houses and imprints, such as Casterman, Arthaud and Père Castor (to name but a few), as well as the Flammarion imprint. The wide-ranging domains covered by these imprints include fiction, non-fiction, biography, history, social sciences, children's books, art, photography, lifestyle, gastronomy, well-being, leisure and crafts.

During the Frankfurt Fellowship Programme, I look forward to learning more about the German book market and its workings, as well as meeting and exchanging with fellow publishing professionals from around the globe.

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Scribner, U.S.A.

I was born in 1985 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved to New York in 2003 to attend New York University. After internships with the Susan Golomb Agency, Levine Greenberg Agency, and Simon & Schuster, I was hired as an assistant at W.W. Norton in 2007, moving in 2008 to the Scribner imprint at Simon & Schuster, where I am now an associate editor.

Working with Scribner editor-in-chief Nan Graham, I contributed to the publication of major house authors like Stephen King, Kathy Reichs, Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Audrey Niffenegger. In 2009 I began acquiring my own projects. My authors include the novelists David Goodwillie and David Whitehouse, and the journalists Daniel Hernandez and Tim Crothers.

Founded in 1846, Scribner was previously known as Charles Scribner's Sons. Our rich backlist includes works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe.

With the Frankfurt Fellowship, I hope to gain insight into how the changing marketplace is affecting publishers worldwide and to continue building a global network of editors and publishers eager to see books flourish in the digital age - and eager to promote works with wide translation potential.

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Teri Tobias Agency, U.S.A.

Teri Tobias graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan and a Juris Doctor from Wayne State University. Teri began her publishing career at International Creative Management where she worked in domestic book and audio rights and then in the business affairs department negotiating publishing and book-to-film agreements for the agency's clients. She later served as the Foreign Rights Director at The Robbins Office and Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, representing internationally bestselling authors.

Teri launched her own agency to combine these skills and develop and champion the projects she's most passionate about, in every format. The Teri Tobias Agency, LLC specializes in commercial projects that appeal to both the domestic and international markets. It offers each of its clients a thoughtful, full-service multimedia approach to find the ideal publishing experience, reach the widest audience, and cultivate a lasting career.

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