Johannesburg — CAPE Town would hold a book fair in June, taking advantage of strong economic conditions that are encouraging people to buy more books, organisers said yesterday.

The three-day event at the city's convention centre will be held in association with the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest in the world.

"In the last couple of years there has been good growth, locally and internationally," Struik Publishers MD Steve Connolly said yesterday.

"More South Africans are buying more books," he said at a media launch in Johannesburg.

Connolly said the upswing in the local publishing and book trades had its roots in the economic boom, with 25-year-low interest rates encouraging South Africans to spend.

Despite its link with the Frankfurt event, negotiated over the past four years, the Cape Town book fair, from June 17-20, is unlikely to be get anywhere near the scale of that event, which last year involved 7200 exhibitors showing 104566 new publications to 280000 people.

Nonetheless, organisers hope the event will have the same effect.

"Frankfurt's about business. It brings publishers and buyers into a city or country," said Vanessa Badroodien, director of the Cape Town fair.

Badroodien said SA also had greater government commitment to local authors and the publishing industry to thank.

"There are about 12000 South African authors currently earning royalties from novels, school books and nonfiction," she said.

On Friday last week the arts and culture department announced it would spend R1bn over the next three years on funding public libraries and would invest R100m in the film and television, music, book, publishing and craft industries.

The fair will bring to SA British historical romance writer Philippa Gregory, Zimbabwean crime writer Alexander McCall Smith, South African storyteller Gcina Mhlope, and other authors and commentators.

The M-Net-Afrika Awards, The Sunday Times' Alan Paton Award for nonfiction and a separate fiction award, and the 25th Noma Award will be presented at the fair.