A glance at the most successful fiction writers in China and in Germany over the past 12 months (on the basis of compilations of monthly national bestseller lists from April 2008 through March 2009) provides plenty of surprises.

- First of all, in the top 10, there is not a single overlap between China and Germany.
- Secondly, translations from English are much less prevalent than many would suspect.
- And thirdly, the top spots on the list are hardly exclusive territory for the industry leaders - independent houses play a strong role, too.

In short, publishing, and hence reading tastes, are much more diverse and much more local than many prophets of doom for cultural diversity would have us believe.
And this is good news for book fairs as well. The diversity draws from a variety of global and regional marketplaces - precisely book fairs - for rights deals and the promotion of authors.

This analysis is based on monthly compilations of the top 10 bestseller lists (fiction) of Boekblad, The Bookseller, buchreport/Spiegel Bestsellerliste, El Cultural, Livres Hebdo/Ipsos, Svensk Bokhandel, and a combined top 20 fiction and non-fiction list for Italy provided by Informazioni Editoriali.

We based this analysis primarily on authors (and not titles or publishers), as we consider the authors as more representative of the brand of a work than the individual title or publisher. In order to assess and compare the impact of an author’s books, we attributed points for each month that a book appeared in the top 10 in a given market (with 50 points for a #1 rank, 49 for a #2, etc.). This system allows for a realistic positioning of larger and smaller countries and book markets across Europe.