Simon Drake – Writer

Preceding most accounts of a Book Fair is a playful warning and it’s only fair to repeat it, but read it like a label on a cigarette packet: WARNING: Writers who attend Book Fairs may be intellectually & morally injured, for life.
Knowing too much can indeed hurt but book trade fairs are not a celebration or discussion of concepts, characters, story lines, creativity and style – that’s a Writer’s Festival. For a book fair, unless you are a writer promoting or launching a book, in which case your publisher will be maximizing your exposure to the market, the business is strictly books, comparable to units, and the players are the publishers, booksellers, literary agents, librarians, media, printers, paper suppliers, distributors and all the other niche players in between, sharing the same functions and goals: Make contacts, chase deals for next year and close deals set up from last year, share knowledge, explore and identify where the market is moving, keeping the industry vibrant and alive.
To the writer, the warning is warranted when witnessing books traded as if on a stock exchange. After all, they are a commodity, and my visits to book fairs were partially to see the workings of the system that ships the writer’s idea to the reader’s imagination. In the real world, that of budgets, print-runs, deadlines, markets, shelf space and publishing motives, what goes on? A book fair is a good place to find out.
Publisher and agents go to book fairs to publicise their upcoming titles and buy and sell subsidiary, international and translation rights. Books are a product (there’s little time to point out a lengthy passage in a book and proclaim its brilliance) and some books are heralded by the large and established publishers with the five digit marketing budgets as the next big thing (“This is the next Harry Potter/The Da Vinci Code!”) and treated accordingly, while the majority can be found at mid-range and niche publishers, hopeful of interest and an entry into a larger market, or at the other end of the spectrum, in the deep end, in the stalls of those who specialize in bulk remainders.
Why a writer would want to attend a book trade fair is not just to see the reality of the publishing industry and to wipe the gloss off the glory of writing, because book fairs host interesting events, lectures, open panel discussions and interviews. It is this exchange of knowledge by those ‘in-the-know’ that draws writers, journalists, editors, new publishers and many more. 
I have been to the London Book Fair twice (2005 & 2007), Book Expo America once (New York 2007) and the Frankfurt Book Fair twice (2004 & 2007). On each occasion I was searching for publishers to which I could pitch my titles, and although I could have achieved as much online, it is unbelievably more helpful and realistic to see publishers, their current range, browse or take their catalogue for the next year, and ask the painful question: Where does my product fit into all of this? Visiting book shops and surfing online is one experience, but to see publishers competing for attention from other publishers and everything in the periphery, is to see the whole. And the whole is not just what you specifically write about, the whole ranges from cult lit to graphic novels, from education to religion, from children’s books to grooming your cat. It’s also a surprise to see what sells, what’s consistently popular, and by visiting the three largest book fairs, how three different cultures operate.
The London Book Fair is as expected, UK-centric. It is usually held in March and for weeks before and after literary journalists fill the columns of the newspapers with industry gossip of the deals made (i.e., the highest advances) and the personalities behind them. There is no harm in this, self-generating interest to guide the public to buy more books can’t be a bad thing. Most importantly, the interests of publishers and agents eclipse those of the authors and the audience because a book fair is the place to do business and for a window of a week or more, the decision makers of the publishing industry are in the one place, locked in meetings, deciding the fate of titles (and careers) for the next year, in a highly energetic and productive manner. As expected with the UK, riddled with class issues, between books about Royalty and Football Heroes (and now their Wives), there is intellectual interception, but usually from the academic elites, schooled at Cambridge and Oxford. The UK is eclectic, and the London Book Fair rightly reflects this. It’s debatable to fault the UK for this, but it is worth understanding that a fair chunk of its industry is structured this way.

Across the Atlantic, Book Expo America is the showcase of the US Market. The Americans are the “go get ‘em – just do it” type, enthusiastic about their titles and tainted by superficial excitement, perhaps because they have the largest and most captive English reading audience in the world. Americans don’t really need to branch out (or travel) and read non-US books (and other media) because they have a colourful, rich, engaging and entertaining culture of their own and the means to export it efficiently as far and wide as possible. Before discounting the juggernaut of US culture and its cliché products (e.g. vertically integrated formulated content), note that North America is Big, it has belts of industry and culture many outside the US will never know about, except if they see it is the star-studded Hollywood movie, cashing in on the well branded cuteness of a time and place.
As an Australian (living in London) it was a relief to visit Book Expo America and discover that this English speaking market, unlike the centralized UK, was more of an open market, and although fixed and to large degree controlled by the intellectual high ground of New York and the innovative and savvy West Coast, in between were markets within markets, all ripe for the picking, if you know how to talk the talk, of course.
The London Book Fair and Book Expo America are predominantly self-serving to their respective regions, always wishing to tie-up export rights to the ends of the earth, but it is the Frankfurt Book Fair that is recognised as the international book fair beyond compare.
The English speaking hall is as large as the London Book Fair and hosts the usual suspects (publishers) from the US, UK, Canada and Australia. But the hall for the German speaking market (over 80million people) is more vibrant. Publishers push their products, not with cringe-worthy hype and glitz, but with a fascination for quality that extends from serving the intellectuals, to the middle-market, to the children’s market.
However, the real international flair at the Frankfurt Book Fair comes from all the other countries, showcasing their literary talent. At first it may not appear to be useful to browse the stalls of foreign publishers, but on second glance it becomes obvious that although an English speaker may perceive that English reigns supreme as an exporter of culture and ideas, there are other worlds out there, self-sufficient, and at a safe distance from the US and UK exporters. While the UK publishing industry pursues agendas and fads (giving preference to, without being overtly cynical, Chick Lit or Biographies of F-grade celebrities) and the US has stable relentless pursuits (Health, Fitness & Beauty) it s relieving to see that in Europe and other generators of intellectual capital, their own trends take predominance, even in the face of over-hyped Harry Potter-esque phenomena. While ideas and books cris-cross the Atlantic (in one way more than other across the Pacific to Australia and South Atlantic to South Africa) other regions, who have little desire to import culture from the English speaking world, will pick and choose imports at their fancy, and give primary preference to their own writers and publishers.
For prospective visitors to book fairs, there is a lot a research to be done and it all starts with the reason to visit a book fair. That reason then governs what to do at a book fair and though hopefuls may arrive seeking to break-in to the industry or do a deal, business doesn’t work like that. Professionals at a book fair are locked in meetings planned months ago and don’t have time for visitors. Book fairs are no place for a writer to stumble around, but a great place to research the industry and talk with people on the stalls.