India's publishing industry is exploding, writes Akshay Pathak at Publishing Perspectives. An estimated 90,000 titles are produced each year, with annual growth estimated to be around 30%. Production standards are improving, there's fresh investment in retail, and there's a growing consumerist middle class. But there's not a lot of hard data yet. Bookscan only covers some of the bigger bookstore chains, and while there are an estimated 19,000 publishers today, no single professional association has more than 1,000 members. Pathak—who works from New Delhi with the Frankfurt Book Fair—identifies some areas for growth. India needs more editors who are better trained, he...

Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin has posted an entry about some of his experiences at the Frankfurt Book Fair, reflecting on the “e-book gap” between America and the rest of the world. For a number of reasons, most notably that the US represents “300 million people in a single developed economy with a single currency and a single language,” e-books have been much more widely adopted here than in the rest of the world. All of this has resulted in getting the US to the point as of Frankfurt 2010 where a US publisher launching a...

Publishing Perspectives has a piece looking at one agent at the Frankfurt Bookfair expressing concern that publishers might be using e-book deals to undermine book territorial rights in general. Andrew Nurnberg seems to be relatively alone in his concerns, however. “The big thing that’s in the air all the time,” Nurnberg said, “is that territoriality is not so much about physical books. Now the question is moving toward territoriality for e-rights. “Some publishers say, ‘No way, we can’t keep these held to any particular territory. It’s no longer physical. If it’s out there then it...

I received the following first class report from Rachel who has visited the Book Fair. She checked out the readers on display and this is what she found: Hi Paul! Just returned from Frankfurt. Didn't have internet access while I was there (the Messe wanted me to pay 49€ per day for wifi, but I wasn't that desperate), so I'm glad to be home. I had an opportunity to check out three e-reader booths while I was there: IREX (with their two readers), Bookeen, and the new German txtr. I got some photos, too. I spoke with the folks at...

Editor's Note: This is from Johannes Haupt. I really like the idea of AA batteries. I hate carrying chargers; and what good do they do you if you are in the Bolivia and you lose the unit, as happened to me?. After that I try to use only stuff that contains plain old batteries. You will have no trouble getting an AA battery in La Paz or Port au Prince!  If you play the video you'll hear them mention that they have a deal done with Barnes & Noble.  Parts of the video are in English. - Paul Biba Hey: Ectaco announced...

Got this email that I thought I should share with you: Hi, I think TeleRead missed this announcement at the Frankfurt Book Fair: The German text is about the planned improvements of the German eBook portal libreka!, which is the official eBook shop of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (federation of German publishers and book stores). The interesting part for non-Germans is the announcement of the release of a libreka! iPhone app in the beginning of November. With this app it will be possible to buy and read the eBooks sold at libreka!---which are EPUB with Adobe DRM. So this will be the...

Publishing Perspectives has its usual PDF, this time covering two digital publishing companies present at the Fair, Open Road from the US and Shanda Literature from China, the October 16 issue covers STM e-book pricing, Estonia’s surprising publishing industry dynamics, and the IPA Copyright Symposium. You can also read about e-books in New Zealand, Japan and Canada; or take a look at photos from a selection of Fair-goers pictured with their favorite words. It looks like an especially interesting issue....

Baker & Taylor announces a new ereader partnership at Frankfurt. They will be delivering ebook content for the new K-NFB Reading Technology reader, which, itself, is a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind. The new reading technology will operate on a variety of devices including personal computers, smart phones and cell phones. Unfortunately the release doesn't say much about the reading technology and it doesn't seem to be up on the K-NFB website yet. ...

Here is the press release: Berlin, October 14th, 2009. This is what fans of digital reading pleasure have been waiting for: Today, txtr GmbH presents its online-compatible txtr Reader at the Frankfurt Book Fair. At the same time, the txtr Store is launched, allowing to easily and conveniently acquire eBooks from your home and soon also when you are away from home. In contrast to competitors, txtr Reader as well as the platform are open for developers in the form of an SDK with documented APIs. Thus it will be still this year that the Berlin based start-up company will offer...

Publishing Perspectives is offering a free PDF version of its Frankfurt Edition for October 14. It includes photos from the opening ceremony with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping. We also attended TOC Frankfurt, the International Rights Directors Meeting, the Supply Chain Meeting and the off-site STM conference. You can find it here....