Today was the first day of the London Book Fair.
Kate had expected to see tumbleweed rolling in the aisles, but in fact it wasn’t like that, at least for Nosy Crow. A lot of our meetings were with UK people – agents, retailers and others – and we had huge trouble keeping up with our schedule. We were constantly on the move from place to place, as we only have a share of a table on the IPG stand (all we could get when we tried to book just after our 22 February 2010 launch). Here (with apologies for another terrible photo) are Deb and Imogen on the stand.
We went to a couple of seminars this morning, of which the first, about creativity in relation to content for children in the digital world, was really good. Chaired by Chris Meade and with Naomi Alderman, Amanda Wood and Neal Hoskins, it was an intelligent look at different ways that children’s reading experience might be affected by the technological devices that are available.
The second, which was about how bricks bookshops might evolve in a digital era was either reassuring or scary, depending on how you look at it. Clever Jonathan Douglas asked trenchant questions of John Newman and Simon Mackay of Westfield’s Foyles, who were resoundingly chipper in the face of digital developments. Nosy Crow loves an independent bookshop, and really hopes that their focus on community, hand-selling, recommendation, connection to schools and children’s events is the way they’ll keep thriving into a future in which Mike Shatzkin estimates that 50% of books will be sold online in 2012 (in the US).
Kate tweeted both seminars (@nosycrow and #lbfdc and #lbfk – this last # is new, and could be used by anyone who wants to tweet about children’s books at the fair, she thought).
