Have you noticed that in recent months there is a book fair every hour in Belgrade? The latest one will be held from May 13 to 17.
From the last one, the big one and traditionally the only one so far International Book Fair in the capital, so from October last year until now, this will be the fifth. Two were held in April alone.
Why are there so many book fairs?
It is not difficult to guess where all of a sudden there are so many book fairs in our country.
Let's remember that last year's Book Fair was boycotted by 20 publishers, that it was held under the shadow of the anniversary of the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, and at the time of civil protests and an extremely bad atmosphere between the Administration and the participants, that it was held with significantly reduced programs: promotions, guest appearances, meetings of writers and readers, and that its existence was hardly even felt in the public - except in a negative context, due to the aforementioned circumstances.
Because of all this, publishers, and above all those who boycotted the Fair, need to make up for what they were denied, to reach the audience, and initiate new small fairs.
The latest is next week.
Therefore, the latest, "The City of Reading - Book Look 2026" will be held from May 13 to 17 in Belgrade, in the Rajićeva shopping center. Visitors in the area of the "Rajićeva" shopping center can expect literary duets, pre-promotions, conversations with authors and thematic formats that connect literature and the modern way of life, as well as festival discounts on books, announced Kosmos publishing house, the organizer of this fair.
Jonas Lischer from Switzerland, Ana Merino from Spain and numerous other domestic and foreign authors will participate in the program, while a special segment of the festival is the program 'From cover to feed', which raises the question of how social networks influence reading and book recommendations. The final day of the festival will also be dedicated to the youngest.
In April – two
It was held two or three weeks earlier, on April 25 and 26 Humanitarian book fair "Books, brothers, books" in 16 cities in Serbia.
It was organized by high school students, a 700.000 dinars collected they donated to the organization NURDOR. It was an action that connected the three pillars of society - culture, education and humanity.
A week before that, from April 17 to 19, the European Literature Festival was held "Book on the Stage" in the Czech House, organized by the "Blum" publishing house. More than 20 authors from Europe came, and 25 domestic publishers participated in the book fair.
It started with high school students
It started with high school students, they are the originators of these new fairs.
Let us remind you that on October 25, at the same time as the Book Fair was opened last year, the Fourteenth Belgrade High School opened Alternative fair, where publishers who did not participate in the "big" fair exhibited.
They were followed by students, who organized a humanitarian event on November 15 and 16 last year "Free Side" fair on Student Square. Their intention was to enable citizens to see publications in one place that they could not see at the Book Fair, plus to enable smaller publishers to show their titles.
"Laguna Book Night", an extremely popular, useful and well-organized small fair, is not on this list, only because it has been around for a long time and is not part of this thread.
The conclusion would be that in a time of bad news about culture, these small book fairs are one of the few good news - they made the book more present and read and, what is important in today's situation, they proved that the intention of those who would like to shut down free publishing is completely futile.
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