by Bill Kirton
I’ve only ever been to one major book fair (as
opposed to book festivals, of which I’ve attended many) but I imagine they’re
all pretty similar.
It was the London Book Fair, around which I
wandered aimlessly for two of its three days. We all know how many hundreds of
thousands of books are being produced each year but, sitting in our studies or
kitchens or attics or yachts or sheds or wherever as we scribble our
masterpieces, we still manage to persuade ourselves that readers will snap up
our babies the minute we let them out. But when you see row upon row of stalls,
with crowds milling round them all, smartly dressed people sitting at tables
with impressive document holders before them deep in earnest discussions with
other movers and shakers, huge adverts for books by people you’ve already heard
of and who hardly need the PR, you start to think that the wee label you’ve
pinned to yourself which identifies you as an AUTHOR is the equivalent of
wearing a yellow sack, ringing a bell and shouting ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ as you
move through it all.
At the same time, it gives a sort of smug
satisfaction that all these people are only here and only earning a living
because writers write books. When it’s laid before you in this way, with
translators, little independent publishers, foreign rights, niche markets, huge
publishing empires and God knows what else, it’s a pulsating proof that the
industry is enormous and dynamic. So vast, in fact, that you get this
ambivalent feeling that your ambitions are presumptuous and yet there must be a
wee corner in it somewhere for you.
But it doesn’t feel like the place that you
can go up to someone on one of the stalls and say ‘Hey, I’ve written this great
book. Want to read it?’ The response would range from a puzzled, concerned look
to an old Anglo-Saxon invitation to go away. My impression, in fact, was that
this wasn’t about books, but about deals. And that’s fine because that’s how it
works. We just have to make sure one or more of our books is/are part of those
deals.
2 comments:
Bill, I know several authors who reach out and literally grab reader/buyers and convince them to buy their books. They have the ability to make people feel guilty if they don't buy. I've never had the courage to do that, so I really don't enjoy taking part in signing parties.
I'm exactly the same, Jean. We really should try to emulate the grabbers but if it doesn't come naturally, it's hard. Mind you, I wouldn't want people to buy my books out of guilt.
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