London calling

If the London Book Fair is any measure of things to come, then we can be assured that, at least in terms of confidence levels, the UK and wider international publishing business is on something of a high. This was a robust and sometimes rambunctious trade fair, easily the busiest and most sure-footed of any of the big trade events post-pandemic. The Brits were buoyant, the Americans were back in town and the mood, unlike the weather, was sunny.

Publishers are at their best when their backs are to the wall, with the earlier LBF as well as the continuing building work at Olympia, things to navigate, while the wider political turmoil across the globe – and in particular in the Middle East and Ukraine – provided the troubling backdrop. London is always less political than Frankfurt, and determinedly remained so throughout the 2024 cycle, allowing voices to be heard, and not commenting on those political acts that did take place around the show.

That Olympia is still under construction – and will be for the next two shows – is a known problem. Nevertheless, both in terms of the space available, and how the fair places that most delicate of entities, the agents’ centre, it irks. For some agents the desks were too open to intrusion (from aspiring authors mainly) but also confusedly arranged (essentially split over two floors), and LBF would be wise to begin its messaging about how it addresses these issues for 2025 now. Talk of a break-away is a nonsense, of course agents and publishers need to be in the same space, and en masse, but everyone needs a little hand-holding now and again. “At least it’s not ‘ExHell’,” said one agent to me, which rather sums things up: this devil being better, for most, than the Mephistophelian bargain 12 miles to the east.

The Brits were buoyant, the Americans were back in town and the mood, unlike the weather, was sunny

That said, LBF should also be mindful that with a restricted floor space available that jostle for space (particularly) at the front is important, and how it divvies it up between the various factions is a visible manifestation of its priorities, with audio deserving a more central space. A New York Times article, “Where everyone knows their place”, is half-right: the show floor does represent “a rigorously stratified world”, just not one anyone has agreed to. What most marks out the trade fairs these days is how constricted the big publisher stands are, and how busy: things are efficient now in contrast to how they were once, pre-pandemic, hubristic.

What impressed me was the ambient noise around the fair this year, whether at the well-attended parties or at the busy seminars put on by LBF. I remarked after Frankfurt how sparsely these had been viewed, and I wondered if the conversation around the business was just becoming a little subdued. London proved me wrong: this was a fair with plenty of chat, and it was better for it.

The biggest disruption, of course, was caused by the earlier start, which is now something we can hopefully adjust to. Agents’ concerns about having a long enough run-up are justified, but the lack of a so-called “book of the fair” may be a price worth paying, if London can set the mood for the year ahead, before the baton is passed to Bologna.