Indonesia is set to make its mark at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest publishing event, on Oct. 16 to 20.

Thirty programs are scheduled to take place at the Indonesian stand, organized by the National Book Committee (KBN) which will bring 350 book titles along with 10 publishers, two literary agents and an illustration agent.

The publishers are Gramedia Publishers, Mizan Group, Kesaint Blanc, ASTA Ilmu Publishing, PT Kanisius, Lontar Foundation, Marjin Kiri, Pionicon, Yayasan Pustaka Obor and re:On Comics.

In a media session held on Tuesday, KBN head Laura Bangun Prinsloo said that a lot has changed since 2015, when Indonesia was named the event’s guest of honor.

“From a fair that featured only print books, it is now the place to see a variety of creative contents. This year’s fair even has a special area designated to feature digital contents and a performance stage,” she said.

Participation in this year’s London Book Fair in March also convinced KBN to put more effort into intellectual property (IP) rights. “In London, we managed to sell the animated movie Battle of Surabaya to Amazon Prime and a board game to a Belgium company,” said Laura.

For the Frankfurt Book Fair, KBN is to add another catalog to their standard list of fiction, non-fiction, comic and children books. “This year, we created one more for IP licensing as we’d like to sell Indonesian characters to publishers and producers. We sensed that opportunities come in many more ways and we see that books have become not only tools for cultural diplomacy but also economic tools,” she added.

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