Frankfurt - The Frankfurt Book Fair opened for business Wednesday, with world publishers to spend five days trading book rights and discussing how to cope with the internet age.

Some 280,000 visitors are expected at the annual event, which is being held in Germany for the 60th time. This year Turkey is guest of honour.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul helped inaugurate the event Tuesday evening at a ceremony addressed by Turkey's internationally best-known novelist, Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Making a virtue out of all its contradictions, Turkey has sent hundreds of authors to the fair and is promoting itself to the German reading public this week as "fascinatingly multi-coloured."

In all, publishers from 100 countries are exhibiting books in a bid to drum up translation and export deals.

Among key issues worrying the traditional book trade is the spread of digital publishing, especially of non-fiction.

Overall exhibitor numbers at the Book Fair have fallen 1 per cent to 7,373, according to fair director Juergen Boos. (dpa)