Novel idea: Frankfurt book fair links ‘theft rate’ to popularity

FRANKFURT: The Frankfurt Book Fair has an indicator to help publishers gauge public interest in the new offerings presented at the annual exhibition — the unofficial “most stolen book” index.

Bild am Sonntag and Germany’s ZDF television have come up with lists of titles most stolen from 15 leading German publishers’ stands set up in the Frankfurt trade fair grounds.

“The most-stolen books are usually the most-sold later on,” Claudia Hanssen of the Goldmann Verlag publishing house told Bild am Sonntag newspaper, which published a list of the 10 most stolen German-language books this year.

“They’re the popular ones and are most likely to end up on the best-seller lists,” Hanssen added.

The German translation of Nobel Peace prize-winner Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, outlining the dangers of global warming, featured among the titles on the list.

More than 100,000 people attended the book fair, which ended on Sunday. There were 7,448 exhibitions where publishers from 108 countries presented some 400,000 different books, videos and other products.