Gottfried Honnefelder

The director of the Frankfurt Book Fair has said start-ups will capitalise on the trade, as the organisers revealed exhibitor numbers were down 2.1% on 2010. In total, 7,384 exhibitors from 106 countries attended last week's fair, with more than 3,200 events attracting 280,194 visitors, which was marginally up on last year (279,325).

Since the beginning of 2010, for every 100 paperback books Amazon sold, the company reportedly sold 115 Kindle books across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business.