This April saw the annual London Book Fair move from its regular venue of Earls Court to the refurbished surroundings of Olympia. It had to move since Earls Court is being demolished for yet more luxury homes that none of us could afford.
The fair officially opened on Monday 13th with a daylong session aimed at the digital element of our industry. This year the key note speech at the Digital Minds conference was given by the author of One Day, David Nicholls. He made a passionate speech about the need and beauty of high street bookshops and had a phrase which I think is brilliant. He said browsing bookshops then buying online is a ‘genteel form of shoplifting’ You can read more coverage of his speech in The Guadian.
Tuesday 14th April saw hundreds of literary agents, booksellers; publishers, authors and anyone else interested in books descend 
on the halls of Olympia on a beautiful sunny morning. The doors opened at 9am and I was in the queue waiting with a great buzz of eager anticipation of what the day held for us all. The main purpose of the fairs, or in fact any book fair is for literary agents to sell the rights of books on behalf of their clients.
For independent booksellers like me publishers are very happy to come along and tell us all about the new titles for this autumn. With so many publishers those presentations took all day and we were shown information on over 100 titles. Somewhere in amongst them we heard about the bestseller for Christmas 2015, I just don’t know which of the books it will be. There are about 60 independent booksellers at these sessions and it’s great to meet and chat with them find out how life is for them and generally discuss what is working for them and sharing knowledge.
I was talking on a panel with a team from Orion publishers about the challenges of launching new authors into the UK book market. This has become harder and harder but we must remember that even the likes of Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel were first time novelists once. We agreed that the days of the editors sitting behind their desks and handing over the new book to the publicity/marketing team to promote and saying here you go, get on with it are long gone. Everyone in the publishing house has to work alongside each other and include the author in the team as well as working in partnership with the bookshops to promote the books and press it into the hands of the book buyer. For anyone leaving college in 2015 who would like to be an editor they’ll have to be fully aware of key marketing skills as well as the impact of social media, it’s not enough just to have an English degree anymore.
Wednesday was another round of presentations, talks and seminars and this time I was on a panel talking to self-published and independent authors on how they could get published. We have a dedicated page on our website specifically for this: http://dulwichbooks.co.uk/independent-authors-tops-tips-from-a-bookshop/ but it was great to talk face to face with eager authors and answer questions and give them tips.
The evenings turn quickly in wonderful social events with publishers hosting drinks parties on their stand or taking customers out to dinner. I was out to dinner with one of our supplier on the Tuesday, getting home about midnight and then on Wednesday it was drinks on The Bookseller stand before heading over to Pan Macmillan stand where they had drinks and cupcakes which were most welcome to give a mega sugar boost after such a long day. I did leave by 7pm because at this stage my feet were saying to me, hey do you know we’ve been carrying you all day and we are tired. A quick bite to eat at a brilliant restaurant called Bill’s on High Street Kensington before catching the 8.25pm train to Orpington. Dreams of an early night were immediately dashed when the train came to an abrupt halt at Sydenham Hill due to signalling problems. There six stations from Victoria at which the train could stop and I could still get home easily enough, but Sydenham Hill is not one. However I am now fully familiar with the buses from there back to Beckenham and it was a tired body that crashed into bed at 11pm.
That episode did not put me off travelling to the fair again on the Thursday, although I am happy to admit that I wore comfortable flat shoes, sounding like my mother here, but needs must. An evening out with friends rounded off a wonderful week in which the book trade chatted, plotted and talked about how we might work better. It was a very good book fair and here’s to 2016.
Visit www.dulwichbooks.co.uk and follow us on Twitter @dulwichbooks.
All images courtesy of London Book Fair Twitter
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