Wednesday 22 April 2009

London Book Fair (LBF) - Wednesday


Day three

LBF 2009 had 1613 companies exhibiting from 54 countries.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, gave the keynote speech and is being quoted as saying that Google is no threat to publishers. He also said that computer games are the one threat to young male literacy.





Some, slightly random, facts from Boris Johnson’s speech:
  • Shakespeare had a vocabulary of 21 000 words
  • Churchill had a vocab of 64 000 words
  • German has 185 000 words
  • And English has 500 000 words - which makes it the best language for books, with such a large choice of words!
  • The phrase ‘big cheese’ come from Hindi

According to a poll at the book fair only 53% of UK publishers have digital plans in place, whilst 43% have no arrangements for the digital future.


More buzzwords and phrases:
  • Monetise content
  • Digital Rights Management (DRM)
  • Digital space
The Digital Zone was as popular on day 3 as day 1 – shame that the ‘theatre’ was so small, so the majority of the audience had to stand. It does show that there is interest in eBooks and ereaders, especially when the content of an eBook is not just text, but images can be displayed too.




HarperCollins have selected Tolkien titles as eBooks, which were on display the HC stand on the Sony ereader.

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