The Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE), which just concluded its February 1-6 run, brought together representatives from more than 60 countries on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.

Germany’s top fiction title at the end of December, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out His Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson climbed up from #5, supplanting previous chart-topper Inheritance (Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance was also #2 in Spain). Jonasson’s novel has sold more than one million copies in Sweden, and rights have been sold in 24 languages. Hyperion acquired world English rights and has an October pub date set in the U.S.

Canada’s biggest multinational publishing house just got bigger. Random House of Canada has become the sole owner of McClelland & Stewart, one of Canada’s oldest publishing houses.

Japanese newspapers are reporting that Amazon has hit a hurdle in its attempt to open a Japanese e-book storefront. According to reports, the retailer has pushed back its launch date for an e-book store in the country, after local publishers declined Amazon's terms.

A few days after Amazon announced that the Steve Jobs biography was its top-selling book of 2011 (combined print and e-book sales), the book debuted on bestseller charts around the world, including the three countries highlighted this month. Steve Jobs was #3 in France and the Netherlands, and atop Spain’s nonfiction list, where it knocked Pedro J. Ramírez’s The First Wreck to #2. Also on the nonfiction list in France, Stéphane Hessel has two titles including Indignez-vous!, which was released in the U.S. by Twelve in September as Time for Outrage.

A total of 291 exhibitors from 20 countries congregated under one roof at Moscow’s Central House of Artists Thursday to kick off the 13th Non/Fiction Fair. The five-day event is set to hold around 300 programs and welcome 10,000 visitors per day.

After weeks of controversy over the revelation that it was selling “soft porn,” the German publishing and bookselling powerhouse Weltbild has been put up for sale by 18 dioceses of the Catholic Church that own the company.

The top three fiction titles in Germany were all debuts in October, led by In Times of Fading Light, which recently won the 2011 German Book Prize and is set for publication in the U.S. by Graywolf Press in fall 2013. Umberto Eco’s newest book, The Prague Cemetery, which debuted at #3, is newly published in the U.S. from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi and Ahmed Al Amri, two of the driving forces behind the Sharjah International Book Fair, have been very pleased with the reaction to the innovations at this year’s fair and at the overall participation.

The Sharjah International Book Fair, which is celebrating its 30th year this week, held its first professional program, announced new translation grants, and saw the number of participating publishers increase by 100 to 884, helping to lead to good activity in the rights center.