Charlie, Giovanni, and I spent the past few days at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the biggest book fair in the world. We met up with friends from Abebooks Europe, ZVAB, Antbo, ProLibri, A1Books, Eurobuch, and LibraryThing; we've been in correspondence with many of these folks for years (some relationships date back almost a decade), but we rarely get a chance to meet face to face.
Some notes from friends
- ZVAB has a German language book blog
- LibraryThing just launched their new German website
- A1Books is developing a new marketplace in India (a relatively young online bookselling market)
- The entire event was live-blogged by the team at Literaturwelt (in German, but viewable in pseudo-English via Google Translate)
The fair was huge, with 7000+ exhibitors spread out over six buildings, and hundreds of authors and speakers. This year's guest of honor was India, and there was a huge contingent of Indian publishers and authors present; I enjoyed getting a chance to see readings by authors like Amitav Ghosh, Alka Saraogi, and Shashi Tharoor, but was most excited to see Bengali author-activist and Magsaysay Award winner Mahasweta Devi in a rare international appearance. I missed seeing Zadie Smith, Vikram Seth, and Jeff Smith, but one only has so much time.
[Now Reading: American Gods by Neil Gaiman] Posted by Anirvan
