After a three-year hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany's Leipzig Book Fair opened once more on Thursday with 2,000 exhibitors from 40 countries presenting the "novelties of the spring."
To mark the "comeback of Europe's largest reading festival," 3,000 events will take place at various locations both at the fair and in the city, Leipziger Messe, the organizer of the book fair, said on Wednesday. The Leipzig Book Fair will welcome visitors until Sunday.
This year, the guest of honor is Austria. Under the motto "Meaoiswiamia", which means "more than we alone," visitors are challenged to think about things from a different perspective.
Despite the optimism about the trade show taking place again, Germany's book industry is not doing well. Small, independent publishers have been "suffering losses and reaching their economic limits," the German Publishers and Booksellers Association said in a statement on Wednesday.
Although book sales were up 6.7 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2023, the figures were still 6 percent below the pre-pandemic levels recorded in 2019, the association said based on data from Media Control.
The organizers are also concerned that "more and more children cannot read properly when they leave elementary school".
"We must invest above all in promoting reading, because this is the basis for social participation," a spokesperson of Leipziger Messe told Xinhua on Thursday.
