The Bookseller.com

17th May 2008

The Media Blog

Anna Richardson is The Bookseller's media editor. Anna's media blog will provide a weekly insight into the big books featuring in the media.

Blogging LBF - Day Three

16.04.08

Things were winding down a bit today at the Book Fair. The corridors were a tad less bustley than previous days, I'm told, although having been cooped up in the office on Monday and Tuesday, the aisles seemed teeming to me--and I'm sure I saw the indefatigable Jamie Byng at his stand, who must have been a bit worse for wear after yesterday's Canongate party, but certainly wasn't showing it.

Following the tales and the pictures of ballerinas, London buses and PMs from the first two days, I was looking forward to the hubbub -- but the first item on the agenda was the anti-piracy seminar with the Publishers' Association's Simon Bell and Akash Chittranshi, the PA's copyright council in India.

Their tales of derring-do in pursuit of India's pirates and plagiarisers were impressive. With more than 350 raids and 805,000 books seized over the past few years, the recent discovery of a large-scale illegal piracy operation in far-flung Jabalpur, and numerous other successes to talk of, Chittranshi pronounced that there was now a "well-oiled machinery for fighting piracy" in place.

However, he stressed that should be aware that publishers would "need privacy protection forever" in the area, with "leakage" (exporting cheap local copies abroad) becoming a growing problem, and that more publishers should be prepared to pay to protect their copyrights.

Following the piracy battles, it was time for a different encounter - with Cherie Blair at the Little, Brown stand. An entirely gracious Blair arrived greeting Little, Brown and her Dutch publishers from Meulenhoff Boekerij. Having been warned that it would be a case of blink-and you'll miss her, it was a pleasant surprise that she took a few more minutes to discuss literary tastes (Iain M Banks' Matter was her latest) and to nearly spill the beans on the 'real' title of her autobiography (before giving in to stern looks and a brief err-hem from her publicity entourage).

For what it's worth, I liked what I saw--all eight minutes of it--and if the Dutch are keen to get their translating mitts on Booth's ruminations (due in-house in May, apparently), then there must be something in them-surely.

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