'Printed word will survive'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, MARCH 26. London's exclusive grand hall at Olympia buzzed with publishers, booksellers and an assortment of bookish types from around the world as the three-day annual London Bookfair got underway on Sunday in a climate of optimism about the future of publishing and the printed word.

While there was no getting away from electronic publishing with its dazzling ``live'' demonstrations and push- button wonders, it looked far less threatening than it had in the past few years and there was a sense that conventional publishing had finally come out of its shadow. At a seminar, the mood was one of quiet acceptance of each other's presence, an acknowledgement that reports of the death of the printed word in the wake of e- publishing were not only exaggerated but based on wrong assumptions.

The seminar, ``E-books: a glimpse of the future or the Emperor's new clothes'', saw the honours evenly divided between e-hawks and the more conventional voices. It was clear that even as most of the big publishers had invested heavily in e- publishing, a surprisingly large number were still holding out and refusing to buy the ``emperor's new clothes.'' A more detached view, heard in the corridors of the Olympia grand hall, was that in the end, e- publishing would create its own niche - basically academic and reference books - without necessarily displacing the printed word.

So long as bedside reading remained a habit, the good old book was safe. The London Bookfair, which in the past five years has emerged as Europe's most important book event, second only to the Frankfurt Bookfair, is bigger this year in terms of participation and the final count is expected to exceed last year's figure of 1,500 publishers and booksellers. Almost every country is represented here - and the contrast between the high-profile American and European ``big hitters'' and the quiet sloggers from Asia and the newly emerging East European countries is palpable.

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Section  : International
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