Asia helps sustain world's publishing sector

As western publishing struggles with sluggish growth, the book industry in East Asia, especially in China, was being seen this week at the Frankfurt Book Fair as a saviour in the rights trade.

Writing in the trade magazine <>, British expert Paul Richardson noted that in volume, East Asia was the largest book-consuming area in the world. China has the top number of books in print. South Korea is one of the world's top-10 book markets.

Though East Asia was behind North America and western Europe in sales value, the three regions together accounted for about 90 percent of the global book business, noted Richardson, director of the Oxford International Center for Publishing Studies.

The world's publishers gather every October in Frankfurt to trade rights and schmooze.

The fair is the world's biggest marketplace for translation rights, with 10 times the attendance of the only other comparable show, BookExpo America, which is held in different US cities each year.

In its other role, outreach to retail booksellers, it also outshines the other main national exhibitions, the London Book Fair and the Salon du Livre in Paris. However space sold this year to German publishers was noticeably down.

That made for a more even balance between the two halves of the fair: the domestic section aimed at booksellers and the general public, and the international section, where the most common question is, "Have you got an appointment?"

Foreign exhibitors operate by the iron routine of the half-hourly appointment, working their way through clients, many from Asia, whom they often only know through e-mails and telephone calls.

Last year's Frankfurt Fair was hurt by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with many New York publishers cancelling attendance at a time when it was thought to be dangerous to fly, but this year visitor numbers from both the Americas and Asia were back to normal.

Fair officials said Saturday that total attendance over the first three days had been 143,566. The fair runs till Monday, and total attendance is expected to be about 250,000.

Most exhibitors spoke of a busy fair, with heavy schedules of meetings. Richardson said British publishers needed to adapt to the "measured, careful style of Asian business negotiations" where deals were rarely struck at the fair but concluded in later contacts.