The Frankfurt Book Fair continues to be the largest European booksellers convention. This year, the emphasis will be on digital as Samsung has become the innovation partner and will lead a keynote speech, entitled “Getting Beyond the Book – Creating a New Digital Reading Experience With Innovative Mobile Technology.”
Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, said the publishing industry, as a key content provider, could financially benefit from the mobile collaboration. “As Samsung continues to embrace new forms of storytelling and evolve the reading experience of millions of users, we think that the publishing industry can profit from this collaboration in many ways,” he said. “At the same time, we also know that the book trade has a lot to offer the mobile technology sector, especially as an important content provider. As the world’s biggest book fair, we think we are well-placed to open many important doors to the key movers and shakers in the content industry and help facilitate some exciting business conversations going forward.”
Samsung has embraced digital content since the advent of the first generation Galaxy Tablet. The Readers Hub was very important to the growth of the companies smartphone and tablet series. Early on, it allowed users to buy eBooks, magazines and newspapers. Samsung eventually went their own route and started to sell eBooks directly, phasing out Kobo and PressReader. Earlier in the year, Samsung announced it was abandoning the Readers Hub and launching a special Kindle edition, where users would get free eBooks every month.
Samsung is still betting big digital publishing, but not in the conventional sense. They intend on showing off all of their latest generation hardware and trying to showcase the relationship they established with Barnes and Noble, for the Samsung Galaxy Tab for Nook.
The Samsung keynote will take place Tuesday October 7th at cConte, which is the precursor event leading up to the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.