The Paris Book Fair opens this weekend, as publishers take stock of their business. “Books are becoming more democratic. Fewer than nine percent of homes had no books in 1997, compared with more than a quarter in 1993. A huge study of the publishing market across the European Union has just been completed, which showed that in 2002 Britain led the way with some 120,000 new books, of all genres. Germany came in second with about 80,000, closely followed by Spain, Italy and France, all with about 60,000 to 70,000 new titles a year. In France the numbers have doubled in the past decade.”