By Hannah Johnson FRANKFURT: A crowd of journalists swarmed around two slightly overwhelmed people on Saturday morning, September 12th at the Instituto Cervantes (the Spanish Cultural Institute) in Frankfurt, Germany. Chinese dissidents Bei Ling (貝嶺), a poet and journal editor, and Dai Qing (戴晴), an investigative journalist, had come to attend the much anticipated symposium, “China and the World – …
Bonus Material: Perspectives from the FBF China Symposium
By Hannah Johnson Numerous journalists were on hand at this Saturday’s Frankfurt Book Fair symposium, “China and the World – Perceptions and Realities.” (A list of speaker and panelist bios from the symposium is available here.) Among those were Peter Theisen, Editor, ZDF TV Wiesbaden and Marc Erath, Editor, Deutsche Welle Television Berlin. We also spoke to Peter Weidhaas, former director of …
Bonus Material: China Spends Five Million Euros on Frankfurt Book Fair
By Edward Nawotka The Frankfurter Rundschau reports that China has spent a total of 5 million Euros on its program taking place at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Numerous events relating to China are being held in Frankfurt over the coming weeks leading up to the Fair, starting with this weekend’s symposium, “China and the World – Perceptions and Realities.” You can …
German Buch News: Dissidents Barred from International Symposium on China
By Siobhan O’Leary The international symposium “China and the World – Perceptions and Realities,” scheduled for this weekend in Frankfurt has been overshadowed by a controversy involving the cancelled participation of Chinese dissident writers. As reported in most of the German dailies, including Die Zeit and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, authors Dai Qing (the 68-year-old who is one of China’s leading investigative and environmental journalists) and Bei Ling …
Bonus Material: Video Interviews from the Beijing International Book Fair
BEIJING: Our colleague Thomas Minkus was on site last week at the Beijing International Book Fair and took the opportunity to interview a few of our esteemed colleagues from the global publishing community. Among those he spoke with were Jon Malinowski, president of the Combined Book Exhibit and PubMatch.org, discussing how he’s seen the BIBF evolve over the last five …
China Offers Ample Opportunities, Despite Global Gloom, Say Publishers
By Xing Daiqi BEIJING: The slogan of this week’s 16th Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) is “To see what the world is reading.” But with China’s position as the engine of the global economy reinforced under the present financial crisis, the world is increasingly curious about what China is reading. Still, in spite of the economic downturn, more than half …
Bonus Material: Stats, Video and Images from the BIBF
By Edward Nawotka The keynote speech of the Beijing International Publishing Forum (discussed in our lead article) was delivered by Wu Shulin, vice-minister for the General Administration for Press and Publications (GAPP). He cited numerous figures — as documented by Emma House, the UK Publishing Association’s International Director — which give a picture of the current state of Chinese publishing. …
What’s the Buzz: Flaws in Google Book Search, Dan Brown Videos, China’s Bestsellers
By Hannah Johnson Adding to the pervasive anti-Google rhetoric, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the failings of Google’s Book Search, particularly with regards to metadata. He said, “the book search’s metadata are a train wreck: a mishmash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess.” (via @ColumbiaUP) As Dan Brown hysteria mounts, one UK publisher …
What to Expect at the Beijing International Book Fair
By Edward Nawotka BEIJING: Trying to take in the totality of Chinese publishing is a lot like sitting down to a Chinese banquet and trying to figure out what to eat first. With thousands of publishers, both state sponsored and independent, putting out some 300,000 titles each year (about the same number as in the US), there’s a lot on the …
Bonus Material: Founder Apabi’s Chinese Kindle Clone
By Edward Nawotka One segment of the exhibition that is likely to be of enormous interest to Western publishers visiting the Beijing International Book Fair is ebooks. Last year at the BIBF, Penguin made headlines when it became the first Western publisher to announce an ebook distribution deal for English language titles in China, and it’s likely that this year will …