Frankfurt Book Fair

For the first time in its nearly 37 years of existence, Human Kinetics has sold more than one million copies of a single title—the English translation of "Strength Training Anatomy" by French journalist and anatomical illustrator Frédéric Delavier. The first edition was released in 2001, and the third edition was released early this year.

40% of printed hardcover and trade paperback books are remaindered or returned unsold to the publisher.

Open Road Integrated Media announced from the Frankfurt Book Fair the expansion of its E-Riginals publishing program.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, LibreDigital presented new data on how readers have sampled book content online over the past 18 months. According to LibreDigital, it has powered more than 500 million page views of sample book chapters and content for publishers, authors, retailers and social-networking sites.

299,112 Number of people who attended the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair, a 5.6-percent increase from last year. The attendance number also set a record since the fair moved to five days from six in 2004.

This year’s Frankfurt Book Fair was held Oct. 15-19 in Frankfurt, Germany, and drew 299,112 attendees. That number represented a 5.6-percent increase over last year, and also set a record since the fair moved to five days from six in 2004. The event, which celebrated its 60th anniversary, also featured a total of 7,373 exhibitors from 100 countries. “Digitization draws people to Frankfurt,” says Juergen Boos, book fair director, in response to the record-breaking attendance. “One of the main reasons for the increase in trade visitors is the need for guidance with regards to the new business models and fields of business which digitization

Polymer Vision announced that it will present its Readius—the “first pocket e-book reader”—at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which will run Oct. 15-19. The new device will feature a flexible display and a wireless connection for downloading books, magazines and even e-mail. The Readius is about the size of a cellphone when it’s rolled up, and unrolls into a 5-inch diagonal screen, according to Polymer Vision. Polymer Vision will present the Readius to Frankfurt Book Fair attendees at the Forum Innovation on Wednesday, Oct. 15 at 10 a.m. Attendees may also view the device throughout the fair at the MVB booth. For more

The Association of Educational Publishers (AEP), a nonprofit organization that serves the industry of supplemental education publishing, has announced the launch of Go Global, a program designed for educational publishers to expand business through marketing and sales of intellectual-property rights internationally. The program is an extension of a previous successful international partnership with Bologna Children’s Book Fair. This new venture expands international potential for its members to the world’s largest book fairs. “A number of our AEP member companies have been selling international rights for some time, and the sale of those rights now contributes 5–15 percent directly to their bottom lines,” says

In Part I of this series, I described how supply chain thinking can be applied to business and career decisions. Correctly identifying your “value proposition” is the key to being able to diagram where in the chain of buying and selling relationships you can be most effective. Building on your core competencies, and recognizing that you need to manage your supply chain relationships becomes the business proposition. Chances are that when you first examine your supply chain, you will find that you have been a slave to it, rather than a master of it. I also noted that by rethinking and realistically recasting your

As I was preparing for this column, I came across the following statement in a brochure prepared by Strategos, strategic planning consultants, that I picked up at an event a few years ago: “What’s amazing is how often top management is surprised when dramatic external change happens. Why the surprise? Is it that the world is violently turbulent, changing in ways that simply cannot be anticipated? Perhaps. But we call them ‘inevitable surprises.’ Think about it. In retrospect, you could have anticipated most of the disruptions in your industry. You can build this capability into your organization. You can be prepared—before your competition.”