Juergen Boos trained as a publisher at Herder Verlag (Freiburg) in the early 1980s and has degrees in both Marketing and Organisational Theory. He has held management positions at Droemer Knaur Verlag (Munich), Carl Hanser Verlag (Munich), as well as Springer Science and Business Media (today Springer Science) and John Wiley & Sons (Weinheim). He became President and CEO of the Frankfurter Buchmesse GmbH (Frankfurt Book Fair) in 2005 and is President of LITPROM (Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature) and Managing Director of LitCam (Frankfurter Buchmesse Literacy Campaign).

On 20 November 2013, he was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. In January 2017, Juergen Boos received an honorary degree from the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. In February 2018, he was conferred the cultural distinction of “Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres“(Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) at the French embassy in Berlin. Furthermore, he is holder of the Spanish Order Isabel la Católica, Encomienda de Numero since October 2022 and of the Ribbon of Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit since February 2023. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of Sheikh Zayed Book Award and a member of Akademie Deutscher Buchpreis (German Book Prize Academy).