London on the Ether Porter Anderson
Look down. This is Wednesday, Day Three, after all. The airy fair-iness of it all has taken its toll. And some of
the booths in Earls Cavern—many booths, in fact—are rigged to make you fall fl at on your face, have you noticed that? You’re all set to glad-hand that
publisher’s rep. You grin your way in, only to launch yourself into your meeting with unanticipated speed because it’s one of the booths raised about two, maybe three inches off the fl oor. This is not what we mean when we talk “agile” in publishing. Don’t you wonder how much
extra it costs the outfi ts who hire this kind of booth from Reed Exhibitionists? The joy of planking one’s next appointment is worth a certain premium. And there are other such hidden trip-ups, Ethernaut, among the tiny £2 water bottles and £4.80 fi nger sandwiches (1). With most of your meet-ups and
drink-downs behind you, I want you to hunker with me now on a quick slurry of ways that the hustle and bustle, the meetings-meetings- meetings of a trade show can make us forget what Faber’s c.e.o. Stephen Page (2) calls “the mirage of stability”. The truth could be closer than you think to that pratfall you just executed at Virtusales. The good Page, one of our icons,
writes in “Publishing fairytales” for The Bookseller (12th April, 3) of his:
“. . . fear that some people in the book world think things are normalising. T at we can all sleep safe in our beds. T at it’s all going to be fi ne and like it was before.”
FOOTNOTES
The authors’ version of this syndrome is that they can become so eager to see the kind of “new normal” Page warns us about that they may not notice some particulars about their expanded welcome at the fair this year. You’d think it would be hard to
miss the irony of that “Prayer Room” sign in the sad little Author of the Day area on the leeward side of the Publiship stand. This sparse backwater near Brompton Road is adjacent to about an acre of warehoused, unused booth- building materials. Not far from there is the much-
heralded Author Lounge, which has been programmed by Authoright. Both Author of the Day and the Author Lounge are situated somewhere east of Turkey (4), which in turn is practically ghettoised out in the rolling pastureland of EC2. Hear any sheep?
“I want you guys to give a shout out: are you c.e.o. of your own global publishing empire?”
Bestselling author C J Lyons, luminary of the moment, wasn’t kidding. She waited for a little good-natured response—“Yeah!”— before going on. The newest of her 16 or so “thrillers with heart”, as she describes them, is this week’s self-published Urgent Care (5). Lyons was on hand to rally the
self-publishing faithful at LBF for the Alliance of Independent Authors’ launch of a self-published book of its own, a how-to for membership. The event lay somewhere between an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and a handing-down of what one speaker termed “regulations” on how writers should vet the “author
services” being advertised to them at every street corner (and trade fair booth) in the land. It formed a curious egalitarian
counterpoint, in a way, to Kobo’s roll-out of the power-reader’s “Porsche of e-readers,” the Kobo Aura HD (6). No word on whether the sweatered luddite reading a paper book in the promotional shot comes with the elite $169 e-reader.
@RICHARDJHILTON Kept saying “Kindle”
instead of “Kobo” to staff at the Kobo stand this afternoon. Awkward. #LBF13
So excited were Lyons and her
author cohorts that they forgot to tell us the title of their new guidebook: Choosing a Self- Publishing Service 2013. It’s been put together with Victoria Strauss, who heads Writer Beware, a watchdog program for authors created by the Science Fiction Writers of America. To illustrate how many ways there
are to trip yourself up in the new kasbah of self-publishing author services, Strauss recently weighed in with a damning column headlined “Author-Unfriendly Terms at Autharium”. Ring a bell? Autharium (7) was just put forward on Sunday at LBF’s Digital Minds Conference as one of eight promising start-ups. It was in contention for the programme’s Innovation Award. It didn’t win. But nor did anyone mention that a powerful author- industry outlet like Writer Beware has named Autharium “all in all, a bad deal for authors”. The alliance launch event at the
fair drew a tidy who’s-who among self-publishing standouts in the UK:
Orna Ross, chief of the alliance; author, editor and instructor Roz Morris; author, speaker and instructor Joanna Penn; author and frequent self-publishing spokesman David Gaughran; Mick Rooney of the Independent Publishing Magazine; and many others.
@THECREATIVEPENN #lbf13 talking
#selfpublishing with crime/ suspense author @writermels
This stab at a “new normal” for
self-publishers and hybrids can be, as Page suggests for others, construed as representing more progress than is at hand. But the Author Lounge corral was packed out for the event (standing room only), the enthusiastic crowd overfl owing into the Bosphorus of a wide aisle bordering the Digital Café and Turkey. Drinks for the event were amply
provided by Amazon (8). Now, does the glass look half-full to you?
thebookseller.com
17 APRIL 2013 | THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT LBF 11
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