The UK publishing industry is not fond of change. Even before the move of London International Book Fair (LIBF) to ExCel in 2006 attendees were itching to damn the new location. Muffled complaints about long tube journeys soon escalated into full scale rants about overpriced sandwiches and inadequate directional signing as the fair got underway. Dissatisfaction culminated in Stella Kane’s announcement of her intention to host a rights centre in the Mayfair based Arts Club to rival the 2007 London Bookfair event. Her comment being: ‘Instead of shivering in a wind-swept barn furnished with nylon day-glo carpets, queuing half an hour for Benjy’s sandwiches with a 200% mark up, why not have your appointments in the illustrious surroundings of the Arts Club, which has been a meeting place for writers since 1863?’
This was not an auspicious start for the 2007 fair. Nor was it the end of claims of a rival event. On 5 May 2006 the Frankfurt Book Fair announced a new international trade book fair to be held on 16–18 April 2007 at Earls Court in central London. The new Book Fair Earls Court organised by FBF was purportedly backed by many leading trade publishing groups, including Hachette Livre, Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin and Macmillan. The desertion of all the major houses to the new fair would have left the traditional book fair foundering.
Those observing the melee were confounded, then, by a subsequent announcement that Reed, the original organisers of the London Bookfair, were to hold the traditional London Bookfair event after all. Not only was it going ahead, but it was going to be staged at the exact location and on the exact dates that had previously been claimed by the Frankfurt operation.
Not surprisingly, FBF CEO Jurgen Boos was less than pleased about the turnabout, accusing EC&O Venues, which runs Earls Court and Olympia, of reneging on its deal with Frankfurt. He said in a statement reprinted by the Bookseller: ‘We believed we had an agreement with EC&O Venues which was subsequently broken by them. We are therefore no longer able to pursue The Book Fair, Earl’s Court, London 2007. We are currently evaluating with our lawyers whether legal action can be taken.’
And Jurgen Boos is not the only one who has been left with a bitter taste. As British attendees look forward to a better choice of refreshments and easier access to the West End, international opinion is less than favourable. The resulting mid-April date for the fair has pushed the fair closer than ever to the American event BEA. This will inevitably impact on the rights sold in the US and BEA’s overall importance.
International attendees have been left marvelling over the furore that the slight inconvenience of location has raised. After all, when you’ve flown halfway around the world to visit the fair, does an extra ten minutes on the tube really make all that much difference? An anonymous commentator from indianprinterpublisher.com, a leading website for the publishing trade in South Asia, points to a more gritty underlying problem. He notes a contrast of styles at the 2006 fair at ExCel, ‘the first, the inclusive and egalitarian spirit of the British Council nurturing the spirit and work of the heterogeneous publishing commonwealth; and the second – insular arrogance and defensive denial of the future by the consolidated and overpriced British publishers’. Adding cryptically that ‘We believe there are larger literary and commercial reasons for the challenge to Reed than just the venue.’
His intimation is of a growing dissatisfaction with the outdated, colonialist attitude of UK publishers towards territorial sales. Australia-based Elizabeth Weiss of Allen and Unwin substantiates this by suggesting that UK publishing operates with ‘a hang-over from nineteenth century politics’. UK based companies assume a right to Commonwealth territories that are straining to become established as independent.
Meanwhile back in Blighty the controversy over location has faded as the annual buzz about who’s buying what intensifies. The deal for HodderHeadline to publish Alan Titchmarsh’s romance novels begins a well-trodden path of big pre-fair sales. Suzanne Baboneau of Simon and Schuster, who published Titchmarsh’s previous titles simply stated ‘we were outbid’. Now all eyes have turned to the Dawn French deal as leading publishers, including Century, part of Random House, HarperCollins and Orion meet her and her literary agency PFD to discuss her memoirs. Each company has already had to offer £1.25m simply to be invited to discuss the proposal.
And as well as the big names, bookfair attendees are hotly discussing the big issues. Most people when asked cite ‘the environment’ as the topic most likely to be covered by upcoming publishing schedules. Carlton Editor, Jennifer Barr, expects that green fever will arise as a logistical debate as well as a commercial subject matter. She anticipates a greater presence of environmental marketing on stands, with more and more publishers tackling the issues of recycled paper as well as transport issues such as ship versus air freighting.
Flying around the world to bookfairs is, of course, not wholly environmentally sound. Still, when presented with the alternative of video-conferencing, reactions are almost universally negative. The confluence of international and UK based publishers in London is a valuable experience for employees at all levels in the trade. Chris Gould freelance illustrator enjoys a unique opportunity to browse international creative trends on his doorstep. And Rebecca Bruce, International Sales Manager at Virgin Books enthuses about London’s opportunity ‘to show itself off as the beautiful and vibrant city it is.’ And adds that she feels proud when entertaining in London and really enjoys doing business on the home turf.
Londoners value their bookfair. And international visitors appreciate the opportunity to visit not just the fair, but British publishing houses and bookstores as well. Unlike the Frankfurt fair, London Bookfair is seen as just one aspect of the UK industry and the culture behind it. It is to be hoped, then, that recent comments about the outdated territorial attitude of UK publishers are taken into account and remedied, that the, largely, irrelevant quibbling about location is resolved and that the city hosts an enlightened, diverse and commercially successful fair for 2007 and into the future.
