Self-published authors and indie authors had a good year at last year’s London Book Fair, with a host of author events lined up and, for the first time, a highly prominent place amongst the big rangy beasts of the publishing world. This year, the feedback was slightly less positive, as reported in this piece in The Bookseller. While the Author HQ remained, and there were some great events, some authors were disappointed that their positioning was further away from the heat of the battle.
One of the reasons for this, though, according to Jacks Thomas, Director of the LBF, was due to the success of last year’s Author HQ, which meant it needed more space, which necessitated moving the location.
In our own humble opinion, the atmosphere at the London Book Fair this year was incredibly vibrant, and, while it was still dominated by the giant stands of the giant publishers, this was probably fair enough. There were other sectors of the publishing world, notably children’s publishing, who were also not quite at the centre of things, but only so many people can be. There continues to be, we believe, a growing openness within the industry about the place of self-publishing, and the scope for self-published authors to succeed with projects that a traditional house could not. From the brilliant design collectives to the digital publishing-service providers that we spoke to, everyone spoke of the energy that individual authors can bring to their books, and how they are just as happy to work with them as they are with the Penguins and the Bonniers of this world, even if they can’t find them quite as easily.