London Times
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (APRIL 2002)
The
London Book Fair has, like its sister Reed-sponsored
show, BEA, extended its dates in recent years.
This year’s expo was two-and-a-half days long, but with
the accompanying ebook and subrights conferences, ended
up sprawling from March 14th to the 19th. The conferences
had a tough time pulling the crowds that LBF continues
to pack in (“over 20,000 publishing professionals from
more than 100 countries,” says the press office), but
given the price (£880) and topic (epublishing), ePub
London still managed to fill a room for two days
at Olympia.
In the go-go ’90s, and even as recently as last year,
electronic publishing conferences were cropping up like
crocuses, but the seminar business has been battered
by the economy, the dot-com bust, and more recently,
fear of flying. And now, instead of talking about a
wired, paperless utopia where content is zapped to hungry
hordes of eager readers, bread-and-butter issues like
copyright and creating standards for metadata are the
focus. Yes, epeople from HarperCollins, Bloomsbury,
and Penguin each discussed how these companies
are using the web, but there was an earnest attempt
to address the yin and yang of epublishing — consumer
ebooks versus professional subscription models; the
opportunities for online promotion versus the difficulties
of actually making money; and the euphoria of free downloads
(when it’s Napster) versus the nightmare of piracy
(when it’s books). All in all, it made for a useful
update on the somewhat sorry state of this yet-emerging
industry.
Meanwhile,
back at the convention. . .
Alas, the same could not be said for the panel
discussion assembled by the Institute of Publishing
for the LBF, entitled “Who Needs Publishing,” a rehash
of the whole debate over the disintermediation of publishers,
which caused a lot of defensive navel-gazing in the
early days of the aforementioned yet-emerging digital
revolution. The star-studded lineup, which included
Macmillan’s Richard Charkin, Cambridge
UP’s Michael Holdsworth, Jill Patton Walsh
(whose self-published book, Knowledge of Angels,
has now sold close to 300,000 copies in the Transworld
edition), and Curtis Brown’s Jonathan Lloyd,
represented their interests: the publishers thought
everyone needed publishers, while the self-published
author wasn’t so sure, even as she admitted that luck
played a role in her success. Still, she questioned
whether conglomerates were dampening publishers’ risk-taking.
Charkin disagreed, though he admitted there were too
many publishers. Holdsworth put it more succinctly when
he argued that the real question is: “Do we need all
the publishers we’ve got? Didn’t we need some of the
publishers we’ve lost?”
The same question was asked by Hrvoje Bozicevic,
publisher and editor of Edicije Bozicevic Publishers
in Croatia, in a post-Fair email to PT. Reflecting
on Harvill’s sale to Random House, he writes,
“The story of Harvill shadowed very much my impressions
of the London Book Fair. If there is no place for such
a publisher, what can other, even smaller European continental
publishers do there?”
Meanwhile, others at the Fair had more pragmatic concerns.
Efrat Lev, Foreign Rights Director at The Harris/Elon
Agency in Israel, reported complaints about restrictions
on entry into the rights center. “Some clerks at the
desk were zealously guarding the entrance and preventing
some colleagues from entering to meet other colleagues,”
causing meetings to be late, or cancelled. Still, as
a first-time attendee, she was surprised at the small
size of the Fair (“although I was surprised that there
were so many tables at the rights center!”), and that,
unlike Frankfurt, “it ends just at the right time, when
one gets tired and ready to stop.”
Speaking of Frankfurt, publishing consultant Bill
Black questions whether Frankfurt is still necessary
for trade publishers focused on English language and
major translation rights, as increasingly London attracts
the same players. Walker’s George Gibson agrees
that the fair has become “much more continental” than
in previous years, citing a greater number of meetings
with non-UK publishers and agents. There were also more
books that were of interest, in part because of a plethora
of history titles, a subject which is “exploding” (see
article). But Gibson agreed
with the concerns of several UK editors, who worry that
the category will be overpublished, resulting in worthy
books being lost in the avalanche.
On
the floor
Regarding lost books, if anyone doubted that Abrams
was now a mere imprint in a mini-conglomerate, trying
to locate it on the floor of the Fair put the question
to rest: it sat under the banner of its new owner —
the La Martinière Group. Near it PGW and
AMS had what looked like a hastily constructed
sign on their booth. At the other end of the spectrum
— and other end of the hall — Rodale had a larger
booth (introduced last year at Frankfurt) right near
the entrance to the Fair. But surely the best touch
was Microsoft Press’s booth, which sported a
vending machine. Slide in your credit card, push the
right button, and out pops a fat technical manual. Better
than a Snickers.
Publishing
Trends was a co-sponsor of ePub London.
©2002
Publishing Trends
