Daily Newsletter Wednesday, 15/10/2008

First-time novelist wins Man Booker Prize

One of several parties in Frankfurt last night was the Berlin Verlag party, where many publishing types gathered to hear the announcement of this year’s Man Booker Prize. And the winner is: Aravind Adiga’s "The White Tiger".

15/10/2008

Standards and identifiers: Frankfurt’s supply chain meeting

The Supply Chain Specialists meeting is a stalwart of the Frankfurt Book Fair calendar: this year’s meeting was the 30th annual get-together for the often unsung people who work behind the scenes of publishing to ensure that everything 'just works'.

15/10/2008

China’s growing independent publishing sector

Question: when is a publisher not a publisher? Answer: when it’s a private Chinese publisher. In China, only state-owned publishers can officially publish books, but that hasn’t stopped a thriving private publishing sector of some 100,000 businesses from emerging in recent years.

15/10/2008

Say "Hola" to Ediciona.com

Launched four months ago, Ediciona.com is a new web portal catering to the Spanish-language publishing community. It offers agent and publisher profiles, job and event listings, a blog aggregator, and daily news updates and has some 3,000 users so far.

15/10/2008

Islam and Europe: A "Win-Win" says Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan, the controversial Swiss-born Islamicist, was a featured panelist during this morning's introductory panel at the International Centre. Entitled "Islam in Europe", the participants tried to define what it means to be a Muslim European.

15/10/2008

Global Innovations and Market Opportunities for Educational Publishers

Today’s EPP (Educational Publishing Pavilion) panel on "Global Innovations and Market Opportunites", blended together two of the primary focuses running throughout this year's Frankfurt Book Fair events: educational publishing and digital initiatives.

15/10/2008

Bloomsbury to launch joint venture in Qatar

UK-based Bloomsbury Publishing has announced a joint venture with the Qatar Foundation which will involve the creation of a new publishing house, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.

15/10/2008

How to turn a rat into an international bestseller

Last year, publishers at the Book Fair snapped up rights to "Firmin" by American Sam Savage. This year, the book has hit numerous bestseller lists and some of the editors use it as a case study to explain what they did to help turn it into a bestseller.

15/10/2008

Abu Dhabi Offers 1,000 US-Dollars for Rights Deals

Publishers who attend the 2009 Abu Dhabi international Book Fair and enter into a rights agreement - either to translate to or from Arabic - will be able to take advantage of a $,000 US-Dollar subsidy.

15/10/2008

Rights directors attend their pre-fair bootcamp

Agents and rights managers made a beeline Tuesday afternoon for the 22nd International Rights Directors Meeting, an essential professional development event held each year on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

15/10/2008

Thirty-year-old keeps growing

This year's Literary Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg) is five per cent larger than last year, with over 500 agents from 300 companies situated there this year. And the journalists are having to make way.

15/10/2008

Making it easier to publish Turkish writers

Visit the Turkish Collective Stand in Hall 5.1. C 976 (and the exhibit in the Forum Level 1) to discover how to obtain subsidies to publish Turkish writers.

15/10/2008

Pictures of the day

Snow falls on the Buchmesse's square, and two Heads of State and a German Pop icon drop by. However, Day One of the fair was all about the tens of thousands of trade visitors, exhibitors, agents and scouts that came to do business - as our pictures will show you.

15/10/2008

Podcast: Welcome to a colourful Frankfurt Book Fair 2008

Today, the Frankfurt Book Fair opened its gates for the 60th time. Listen in to get an impression of this year's colourful Guest of Honour Turkey. We speak to the Director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Juergen Boos, to visitors and to Turkish publishers about their expectations.

15/10/2008

Recommendations for Thursday, 16 October

E-books in the Arab world and facts und figures of illustration in Europe: these are two of today's more than 500 events at the fair. Here’s a selection, recommended by the Book Fair Team.