New and newer voice

[Photo provided to China Daily]

Russian publisher Maxim Lozovskiy with Eksmo AST Publishing, whose task at the fair was to follow the latest trends in global publishing, found the speeches by two representatives from China's publishing industry interesting. One was by Gong Shuguang, chairman of Hunan Publishing Investment Holding Group, and the other by Ma Minghui from the Educational Science Publishing House.

Ma was among six "young talents" at this year's Frankfurt fair.

Gong said Chinese publishers shouldn't be content with the huge domestic book market. And to show effort in that direction, the China International Publishing Group held a seminar on the fair, where it invited experts from Europe to give advice on their published titles that are aimed at the global market.

According to Susanne Barwick, who is with the German Publishers & Booksellers Association, Germany has a book market worth 9.2 billion euros ($10.01 billion), while China has one of 18 billion euros.

"China is the country that buys the most copyrights of German titles," Barwick said, adding that Germany buys most from English-speaking countries, followed by France and Japan.