Countdown to National Book Week

Is it that time again already? Well, not quite, but it's time for me to start budgeting. Details are now available for the 37th National Book Fair. The annual event is held at Queen Sirikit National Convention Center.

This year the fair will run from March 26 to April 9 April 6, 2009, from 10:00am-9:00pm each day. The fair originally stemmed out of National Book Week, but the fair has proven so popular over the years that it's now a full nearly two weeks, and held twice a year (the October version is called Book Expo Thailand).

According to their website, attendance at the fair was 1.2 million in 2006, up to 1.5M in 2007, and 1.7M in 2008. And last year total sales from the event equaled USD$13M. That's nearly half a billion baht. Wow.

As usual, the fair also coincides with the Bangkok International Book Fair, now in its seventh year. While the majority of books on sale are in Thai, there are actually plenty of English (and other langauge) books to be found, too, both secondhand and new. AsiaBooks usually has very good discounts; last time I recall it was 20% across the board, and they also had an "outlet" booth with even lower prices. And last year, out of 870 booths, 105 were run by international publishers, from 17 countries.

I generally go for the book shopping, but they always have a number of interesting book-related events during the fair. There are author signings, seminars, and other things of a bookish nature. No details on those yet, but I'll keep an eye out.

[Source: Bangkok International Book Fair 2009 website]