Frankfurt Book Fair 2025

Here’s Laura’s reflections on the Book Fair:

My first ever Frankfurt Buchmesse was a doozy.

The scale of the event took me back, quite honestly. And while it was drizzly outside, inside was crackling with energy. Fueled by coffee and some incredible pretzels, I attended six speaker sessions throughout the day. No surprise that AI was a common topic in many of them.

The opening panel “Navigating the Next Wave: Scholarly Publishing’s Uncertain Future” set the tone. Legal ambiguity around AI training and declining traffic due to AI summaries were major concerns. Publishers were advised to review licensing models and access policies, possibly shifting to paid models or restricting crawler access.

Elsewhere, “AI and the Battle for Reality” zoomed out to a global perspective. The UN’s Melissa Fleming and others emphasized that AI can both amplify and combat misinformation. And that smaller, custom-trained models are more trustworthy and effective. These models can be domain-specific, helping publishers regain relevance.

Some key themes from all the sessions:

Licensing is leverage: The licensing question is still up in the air in many respects. But publishers need to be at the forefront of that conversation.

Books and journals still matter: In a noisy, ambiguous digital world, research publications remain a trusted resource. Interactive AI tools can serve as a nice enhancer.

Like in every other industry right now, it can be easy to slip into pessimism about the AI’s impacts. The message out of the book fair was clear. AI can be a boon for publishers, but they need to be engaging with it now, not later.