Why I am Not in Morocco Right Now

Because this is the email I received from my travel company, with the subject line 'change to itinerary'. (Red circle mine.)

Do you see where the departure time is? All the way over on the other side of the email, by itself, just like it was a flight number or some other meaningless piece of information?

I sure didn't!

They have a saying in Morocco, 'inshallah', which means basically 'if God wills it'. Well, God did not will this one quite yet. I have another flight booked on Tuesday so will still enjoy a quick vacation with my sister, albeit a truncated one.

To all my digital editing readers, let this be a warning to you: word wrap is not your friend!

Working Vacation

How do you travel so much and get all of your work done? Well, here's the sad truth: I'm a boring traveler. I walk and walk and walk and when I'm tired I sit at a cafe and type up papers. I had a fantastic time seeing Barcelona in this way, and I was able to get a lot done on my Language essay. (I wrote it about Spanish publishing, so I could feel like chatting to trinket vendors was doing 'research'.)

At one point, I was sitting at a cafe overlooking the Sagrada Familia and chomping on a pastry, when all of a sudden a great load of honking tourists came pouring out. Then fire trucks roared up. Whoops. Some guy decided that day was a good one to set Gaudi's still-unfinished masterpiece on fire.

Keep in mind, the building has been under construction since the 1800s. It's absolutely gorgeous, but the awe-inspiring towers are sort of dwarfed by even taller industrial cranes.

It kind of adds to the appeal, though. Maybe someday I will be able to take my children... or grandchildren... or great-grandchildren... to see the finished building. Or maybe it will take another 80 years, like they think, in which case my great-grandchildren will have to find dashing rich husbands to travel with; I'll be too tired.

But unlike Gaudi, my work has actual deadlines, so once the crowd became too much to bear I moved inside a Starbucks and watched the commotion from inside the window. Just another day witnessing a cathedral being both built and burned down.

Thoughts from Barcelona

There's something about travel that changes the way you think. Everything is magnified; all sentences end with an exclamation point.

For instance:
- You! You there, wearing the ugly red, white, and blue American flag striped t-shirt!

You look like an idiot, and for that I salute you!
- You! Girl clmibing a steep hill in a short dress and tall heels! You are similarly absurd and I salute you, too!
- This hostel smells funny!
- That building is scary!

Sagrada Familia

- No, I do not want to buy your little noisemaker, tourist attraction vendor man! Why did you sell one to each member of that large group of schoolchildren! That was very thoughtless!
- That building is even scarier! Gaudi is so scary!

Casa Battlo

- Oh no! A nude beach!
- Upon closer inspection I see that the man in the American flag shirt is German! Even better! Thank you for inviting ridicule to someone else's country, sir! In return maybe I should go to Italy wearing a German flag and yell harsh-sounding things at small children!
- I now recognise the smell in this hostel!
- Ouch! Sunburn!
- Somebody needs to take those noisemakers away from those children! I can barely hear myself think!

Silly Cow

The town of Oxford got its name because of the area in Port Meadow along the Thames where the oxen actually ford the river in the summer months. The phenomenon has been occurring for hundreds of years, and the wild cows in that great field still cross the river in Port Meadow today.

Uh-oh.

So, picture Your Correspondent after sixteen or seventeen miles of jogging, on my way home after a wonderful marathon training session. Headphones in my ears, a little sunburnt, and very very tired.

All of a sudden there is a moo. Then another moo. An ANGRY MOO.

Here they are, then, fording the river: the cows. Whole herds of cows. Where am I? Jogging past a smaller herd, consisting of mostly baby calves, which apparently Mama Cow thinks I am about to attack and kill. (No, Bessie, I'm a vegetarian!) I can see the anger flashing in her little cow eyes as she bellows again, lowers her head, and charges across the river at me.

I really should have kept my promise to find a different park. 

On the other hand, it's a great way to train for a faster time. My little tired legs were a blur as I vaulted behind the gate, which, I realised too late, was probably built to keep cows out instead of herding them in. One thing is certain: as angry as Mama Cow was with me, it's nothing compared to how angry my own Mama will be when she reads this story. Sorry, Mom! I'll find a treadmill next week, I promise!

Let's hope this is my last post involving dangerous run-ins with livestock. With that, I'm off to Spain, where I will surely be safe from marauding cows.

Oh. Wait.

Fair Thee Well

London Book Fair

They called it "back with a vengeance".

Last year's London Book Fair was described to me by many people as "eerily quiet" - not due to lack of interest, but because of the volcanic ash cloud hanging overhead which prevented any of the exhibitors' planes from landing at Heathrow. This year they made up for lost time and filled Earl's Court with chatter of ebooks, trade terms, and the latest news from Random House.

Sounds straightforward, right? You should know better. Personally, my LBF went a little bit like this:

- Day 1 - I was up in the International Rights Centre, the super-secret upstairs where you need either a red badge or a secret password to get in. This is where the agents sit who have hardcore dealing to do. No exhibitions for the public, just business. Well, I found myself at one point meeting with one of my boss's favorite customers who turned out to be a) living in Boston, b) from my hometown, and c) like me, a professed enthusiast of feather bowling at the Cadieux Cafe in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

"Feather bowling?" my boss asked, having been interrupted from negotiating a contentious agreement. "Are you making that up?"

No. For the rest of the meeting this customer let his colleague do the talking as he pulled up YouTube videos of featherbowlers and explained how the game was so rare they didn't even play it in Belgium anymore - Belgians come to Michigan especially for the fun. Huh. My boss still believes that we were making an April Fools.

- Day 2 - On the other end of the scale, I volunteered as part of the Fair to oversee the Cookery Corner, where chefs had 45-minute presentations making their favorite foods for the crowds. It wasn't the most exciting job, as the Cookery Corner permanent staff already had things well in hand, but I did learn how to cut a mango. And it's about damned time.

Then I watched the sun set over the Tower of London on my way home.

- Day 3 - I had scheduled a rash of meetings relating to my dissertation. (Latin American publishers don't often have any other occasion to come to London.) The Fair had slowed down enough and my contacts were so kind that I was actually led to one or two of the super-secret negotiating tables to ask someone what they thought of publishing in Mexico.

Everyone was a bit bleary-eyed at that point, but good progress was made, and I went home appreciating the fundamentally social nature of the publishing industry. Yes, we have stuffy industry fairs and glare at anyone who's carrying a white badge in the red-badge-only zone, but the people who work in books tend to be those who have a thing for personal expression, the creative arts, spreading knowledge.

Put it this way: after three days of walking my little legs off to discuss platform-independent content, digital licensing, and ebook volume sales, what was the first thing I did on the bus? Crack open a book.

My Fair Lady

It's official: I am terrible at vacationing.

My Easter break began last Thursday, and since then I have had exactly zero hours of downtime. In fact, I've been gearing up for what is the second-largest book fair of the European circuit: the London Book Fair.

While I hope it's nowhere near as hectic as Frankfurt was, I still have some major 'firsts' on the calendar. On Monday I will have a chance to sit in with the licensing agency I've been researching for this entire year, to discuss digital rights with a number of platforms including Amazon and Kobo. Then on Tuesday I'm actually volunteer, and there's a chance I will be leading around famous authors and finding them bottles of water. Wednesday is my day off, when I track down those elusive Brazilian publishers and try to get some interviews scheduled for my dissertation.

With all of these adventures it will be worth a moment to stop and appreciate the setting. Earl's Court, besides being the site of my previously described Great Britain Beer Festival adventures of 2008, is a historic venue for anyone who's any sort of fan of British music. How ironic I'll be sitting in my dress shirt and pressed trousers in the same room where Mick Jagger once performed this?

What A Twit

I like to set the bar high for myself. That seems to be why I've decided to focus my dissertation on a continent which I am presently not on, and where I don't really know anyone, and where I don't really even speak the language. Problem? What problem?

In this electronic age, though, all barriers are surmountable. Really, getting the attention of the right people is a matter of marketing.

First step: publicity. I've started a Twitter feed to help me connect with people working in publishing half the world away, to see what they're talking about, and to try to talk to them. You can follow me at @PublishLatAmOXB, and of course feel free to retweet whatever you'd like.

How very Publishing 2.0. Just an experiment within an experiment.

More News On That Riot

As seen from my bedroom window, just after the World Cup Cricket Finals.



I guess India must have won!

Fool's Gold

Tell me what would your reaction be if you opened The Bookseller and read this: Government Set to Curb Foreign Authors. Under the plan, bookstores would only be allowed to hold 10% of stock from overseas writers.

The Bookseller has learned Prime Minister David Cameron is set to give a speech today [1st April] outlining his latest iteration of the "Big Society". A DCMS spokesman said: "The publishing industry needs protecting from the Browns, Larssons and Meyers of this world. We think British literature should be celebrated, not swamped. Crime novels set in gloomy Scandinavian forests have an unfair advantage over our cosy domestic settings, so we have to level the playing field to protect this vital domestic industry."

I think the date in brackets gives it away. Even the trade press isn't above a good April Fools.

(... Right?)