The London Book Fair 2012 concludes marking a deserved success

Furthering the best practices in book publishing Featuring the largest ever seminar programmes, biggest ever Market Focus Pavilion marking China’s impressive presence and a host of new international companies...the London Book Fair 2012 concluded successfully. There was also good presence of Indian majors, with around 58 exhibitors including those with base at US and UK. Seeing the huge potential at the fair, many exhibitors like NCBA and JP Brothers were willing to go for bigger size stalls in the next edition of London Book Fair. The trends clearly pointed that after excelling in manufacturing, now China is all set to lead publishing world via cultural route, with internationalization of Chinese companies. Another important observation was that visitors from Africa need to be focused more. One of the major international trade book fairs, the London Book Fair, held during April 16-18, 2012, concluded successfully, with effective presence of over 1,500 exhibitors from 57 countries including India, and its largest ever Market Focus Pavilion. Over 70 new individual international companies were exhibiting, with representatives from five new countries - Brazil, Flanders, Hungary, Hong Kong and Lithuania. A vibrant seminar and events programme, rebranded Love Learning for 2012, featured a schedule of over 400 seminars and events. CAPEXIL from India arranged the Buyer Seller Meet but with limitations of conducting it on the last day and the buyers busy at their respective stands, the purpose could not be served. Interestingly, there were over 584 tables at the International Rights Centre.

The Market Focus

The Market Focus 2012 placed China’s publishing and literary industries in the spotlight. Featuring over 180 Chinese publishers showcasing the different aspects of publishing in China, the Market Focus Pavilion also included a wide range of professional and cultural events and industry debates covering a wide range of topics from education, literature to copyright, created to support international publishers’ understanding of the Chinese market - as well as giving UK audiences a rare opportunity to meet and interact with a new generation of Chinese writers.

The Indian Noon

With initiative of top ten book printers from India, to present Ability, Affordability and Adaptability of Indian book printers community and highlight Indian Bookonomics, a get-together ‘The Indian Noon’ was organised on the opening day of the show. Aiming to enable overseas book publishing majors to discover India having enormous hunger for books, this conference focused on India’s capabilities to offer a raft of services to the world market. Presenting the overview of Indian book printing industry, Pramod Khera of Repro India Ltd emphasized on the strengths and potentials of the Indian market. “In Indian print industry worth US$ 20 billion, there are over 2,50,000 presses, and leading printers are constantly enhancing their capacities, investing in a big way to provide better service to the world’s publishing majors. With establishment of the proposed state-of-the-art ‘Book City’ in India, we shall be able to offer the best in the competitive environment for the benefits to publishers worldwide,” he said, addressing over fifty attendees.

The panel discussion on ‘Discover Indian Bookonomics – its Ability, Affordability Adaptability’ was chaired by Dominic Mills, group editor, Redwood while the panelists included Neil Badford, divisional production director, Random House; David Murray, operations director, HarperCollins Publishers; and David Hetherington, vice president for academic educational merchandising and digital printing, Baker & Taylor.

It was disheartening to see that none from the audience added at the panel discussions. Also, it would have been better if some informative literature on Indian book printers were distributed amongst the attendees, like the Hong Kong publishers and printers did at their event ‘Soaring Creativity.’

Digital Zone

Expanding its digital offering, this year the Digital Zone, located in Earls Court Two, featured two Digital Zone Theatres, as well as a whole area dedicated to App development. An increased programme of digital seminars included What's App? The Relevance of the App World to Publishers with panelists including Adrian Laing, director, Laing & Co, Max Whitby, CEO Touch Press and Stephen Palmer, managing Director, Lonely Planet; The Great Debate, the now annual lively session between publishers old and new, who debated “The Fight for Survival”; a session on Creating E-books with Chris Jennings, Oxford Brookes University; as well as Core Skills for Digital Publishing with Neil Morrison, author; Steve Connolly, Digital Directory, Hodder Education; Helen Kogan, managing director, Kogan Page and Susan Kavanagh, partnership manager, Skillset. Indian participants like Aptara were also prominently present at the zone.

Children’s Zone

The Children’s Innovation Zone, one of the largest at the Fair, featured over 30 presentations over three days, with everything from World Atlas apps from Barefoot Books, teaching reluctant boy readers to read with blogs by Seven Arches, to a Weird but True app from National Geographic.

Cook Book Zone

Internationally renowned chefs from Malaysia to Portugal to China took part in cookery demonstrations throughout the show in the Cook Book Zone. Chefs this year included Jimmy Yang Jimei from China, bestselling Indian cookery books by author Mridula Baljekar and Le Cordon Bleu teaching chef Eric Bediat.

Lifetime Achievement Award Ceremony

This award recognises an individual who has made a truly significant mark in the sphere of global publishing. This year’s recipient was Jorge Herralde, director of Editorial Anagram, for his ceaseless work to promote the international reputation of Hispanic literature.