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.” 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.
