The London Book Fair

I saw a strange shiny thing in the sky this morning over London. Not sure what it was, but it had flashing lights and seemed to be moving quite fast in the direction of Heathrow. Probably some kind of UFO, I expect.

I’ve not made much progress with my novel so far this week as I’ve just returned home from three days at the London Book Fair in sunny Earls Court. I lugged my heavy laptop around with me between meetings, thinking I’d get some writing done in a quiet corner, but I would always bump into an old friend or bookseller or publishing colleague and get chatting for ages.

The London Book Fair used to be called The London International Book Fair, but the International bit was dropped some years ago. I suspect they dropped it because it sounded a bit chippy, but the absence of that word made the show’s title accurately reflect the almost complete absence of overseas visitors this year. There were empty stands where exhibitors couldn’t even show up. The majority of people’s appointments were cancelled. Summersdale sent a rights assistant home after the first day, since there was no point just sitting on the stand reading newspapers. It was a shame, because we were showing off our new design of exhibition stand and there were not many people around to appreciate it.

At least Summersdale’s 20^th anniversary party went with a bang. The place was heaving with guests including agents, publishers, writers, illustrators, some lovely people from Waterstone’s and a couple of blatant gatecrashers. We had fun with stories of the early days in the business when we all lived in the office, showered in the car park with a hosepipe and travelled the country in old Post Office vans selling books into the shops.

I think it was in my book How to Get Published that I wrote about how authors dress when visiting book fairs. Male authors have a tendency to wear hats and scruffy suits at these events, for reasons best known to themselves. Female writers just tend to be a little dishevelled. Both sexes will carry a small rucksack full of copies of their manuscript. They come to book fairs to make contacts with publishers, to offer their manuscripts for submission in person, and to learn directly what kinds of books publishers are looking for. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Publishers, however, are generally there to sell rights to their existing books rather than to sign up new ones from passing scribes. So it’s not unknown for publishers to pretend to be in an important meeting when a writer passes by their stand in order to avoid being drawn into a long sales pitch. Writers only have themselves to blame for this: if they smartened themselves up and checked their hats into the cloakroom at the entrance to the exhibition hall they would be much harder for publishers to spot and would have a greater chance of being able to pitch their book proposal. In my ‘disguise’ as a publisher I pitched The Sphinx Scrolls a few times this week to publishers and booksellers, and came away highly encouraged by the response I received. I really must put a hat on and finish this book now…