The Bookseller.com

8th September 2008

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Buzzy mood at busy fair

16.04.08 Alison Flood

Early indications from the London Book Fair suggest that visitor numbers are up on last year, with 67 countries exhibiting and an extra 10% of stand space. Publishers attending the fair were also broadly positive.

"It feels very buzzy—we are doing good business," said HarperCollins Worldwide c.e.o. Jane Friedman." Mary Vacher, licensing development director at Random House Children's Books, added: "It hasn't really mattered that the fair has been so close to Bologna--I have had a very good two days full of very good appointments."

Fair director Alistair Burtenshaw said he felt the event had settled in well to its new home in Earls Court, after the problems experienced at 2006 in ExCeL. This year's event occupied Earls Court Two as well as Earls Court One, with last year's upstairs exhibitors coming down to the ground floor. "It feels to me as if Earls Court is a good home for the London Book Fair," said Burtenshaw.

Digital issues dominated the ­agenda, with both Penguin and Pan Macmillan using the platform of the fair to announce plans to publish new print and e-books simultaneously. A wealth of seminars also dissected the challenges the trade is facing on digitisation.

The rights battleground moved from Europe to Australia, as Australian publishers called for an end to British publishers' insistence on Commonwealth rights. And a raft of high-profile rights deals were struck, including the largest-ever sum for world English rights in a Chinese title, and a $1m (£500,000) price tag for the "Freakonomics of sport".

London Book Fair Home Alison Flood