Bookplanet: The London Book Fair

Theme of London Book Fair Is What Technology Can Do
By SAMSON SPANIER

If this year's London Book Fair had a theme, it would be technology. The most popular event on Sunday, the opening day, was a lecture by John L. Needham of Google, about that Internet company's Book Search program. The lecture hall was full to capacity 15 minutes before the scheduled start time, and many who could not fit into the session lingered by the door, hoping to slip in if anyone left early.

And though Mr. Needham, not surprisingly, extolled the marketing power of the search tool, the issue of the meaning of copyright in the e-publishing age was clearly on attendees' minds here at the fair, which ends on Tuesday.

"The dynamics are such that this is going to happen," said Adrian Laing, a British copyright lawyer who gave a session at the fair. "The sharpest authors will do the sharpest deals."

Also on the technological front, the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood introduced her device for signing books electronically from afar. The LongPen, as she calls it, records handwriting digitally, then zips the information across the world to be emulated by a robotic arm. From the stand of Bloomsbury Books, her publisher, Ms. Atwood chatted by videolink to a conference room in the fair complex, and then signed her books from a distance. The device malfunctioned at first, and during the 30 minutes of tweaking, Ms. Atwood was philosophical about improving the lives of writers, who "will have other mortifications, such as the one you just saw."

Ms. Atwood dismissed any anxieties that fans would rather meet writers in the flesh. "I'm not a rock star," she said. "My buttons don't get torn off. The book is the interaction."

But book fairs are still about selling rights, and the London fair is beginning to rival the pre-eminent Frankfurt fair, in October. Diane Spivey, rights and contracts director of the Time Warner Book Group, which was recently acquired by Lagardère, the French media and defense conglomerate, said: "We sell perhaps 40 percent of rights in London compared to 60 percent in Frankfurt, but five years ago London was 10 percent."

But London has some catching up to do. Dana Kalinova, at the Czech Republic's stand, said that for her, "London is only Anglophone, whereas Frankfurt is for world rights."

The fair is hence deliberately becoming more international. This year there was a focus on Mexico, with a large stand for Mexican publishers and their representatives. Meanwhile, Thailand made its debut here.

The fair is also a barometer of other trends. Sales of rights to foreign thrillers did well. And Cardoza, the gambling and gaming publishers, took a larger stand than in its debut last year, a reflection of the rise in Internet poker.

The internationalism of the fair ensured high attendance — preregisteration was up by 3 percent this year — despite fears that the new, coldly industrial site in the eastern suburbs would repel those who preferred the old location in affluent west London. Nor did visitors seem deterred by the letter of protest published last week in the Times Literary Supplement from writers like A. S. Byatt and J. M. Coetzee , who said that the fair was tainted because the organizer, Reed Exhibitions, also stages arms fairs.

Indeed, the presence of all the industry's figures, including authors, was seized on to encourage a book culture beyond the market. The "longlist" for the Orange fiction prize, given to the best novel of the year written by a woman, was announced, and the British Council, a government body that promotes British culture abroad, instigated a prize for young international publisher of the year. One of the judges of the latter was Gautam Malkani, whose first novel, "Londonstani," will be published later in the year.

"The seminars and prizes make the fair a lot more than the cattle markets that trade fairs in other industries often become," he said.