For those who have had the honour of never attending the Frankfurt Book Fair it's hard to describe the enormity of the experience. Probably the most worrying statistic is that there are more than 10,000 journalists reporting on the fair - and there really is very little news to report so far. I guess they'll just have to make something up as usual.

There is suprisingly little technology in the main hall and I have had to beg the use of a terminal to write this from the wonderful Thomson team. On the other hand the amount of hot air is at normal levels.

The Macmillan team is assembling. One delay so far where a guinea fowl ran into the engine of a jet leaving Zimbabwe thus delaying our key director's arrival. One other logistical nightmare unfolding is our need to supply large quantities of books for Kurdistani primary schools. Our plans were initially wrecked by the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, made worse by the row between the Turks and the Kurds and finally delayed by the start of Ramadan.

One issue which doesn't seem to be going away is the price differential between US and UK editions of college textbooks. Because of the very high used-book market in the USA publishers need to build in to the price the decline in sales over the life of an edition. The used-book issue in the UK is less severe (although growing at a frightening rate helped on by traders on ebay) and thus prices have been kept down. This disparity will have to close if we are not to see significant international arbitrage and the resulting diminution of authors' royalties. Yet another challenge for our industry to resolve.