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.