SHANGHAI, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- This year's Shanghai Book Fair celebrated its 16th anniversary on Wednesday with more than 500 publishing houses nationwide and over 160,000 titles.

With an exhibition area of 23,000 square meters in the main venue, the Shanghai Exhibition Center, the annual reading carnival, held on Aug. 14 to 20, will have more than 100 sub-sessions in the city.

About 50 branch venues of the book fair have been set up in cities of the Yangtze River Delta region and other places across the country for the first time since its inception in 2004.

Book lovers will have the chance to discover more than 500 new titles and participate in over 1,270 reading activities over the week.

Xu Jiong, head of the municipal press and publication bureau, said that readers can get information about these activities on their mobile phones using a newly launched mini program on the WeChat platform. Online reading and audio books are also recommended.

"We're looking forward to seeing the accelerating transformation of the Shanghai Book Fair in the digital age," Xu said.

As a key unit of the book fair, the 9th Shanghai International Literary Week, concurrently held from Aug. 13 to 19, has invited best known authors from home and abroad, including American novelist Jesse Ball, Norwegian writer Roy Jacobsen and Japanese author Kakuta Mitsuyo.

An exhibition on Victor Hugo will be jointly held by the Pearl Art Museum in Shanghai and the Paris Musees, showcasing more than 200 works of the eminent French writer, including manuscripts, paintings and books.

Shanghai is the cradle of China's modern publishing industry and is known as a national leader in cultural literacy and artistic appreciation.