My LBF Horace Bent
Owing to overwhelming—okay, moderate—public demand, the erstwhile custodian of the Organ of the Book Trade returns to guide you around the aisles at the London Book Fair...
Bent’s Notes R
OLLING OUT THE red carpet for its authors this London Book Fair has been Pan Macmil- lan, or the “Mac Daddy” (not my term, but the moniker coined by its sales supremo Jonathan Atkins1
), all part of its ongoing 175th anniversary
Two Hoots-enanny. Arguably the most important was the David Baldacci2
-fest at Chelsea’s Bluebird
Café. I wonder why they chose that venue? Were the Mantle Bar and Grill and the Picador Carvery (with its famous £4.99 Sunday Roasts) both booked out?
Baldacci arrived at LBF almost a mater of moments aſter stepping off a plane from the US and, jetlag be damned, the man looked sharp: clad in a great suit and sporting a lush head of hair. The crime writer spoke movingly about the liter- acy work he does with his wife and apologised to people who were around for his last UK tour: it was just aſter the present
incumbent of the
White House assumed office and, well, there was some ranting involved.
During the event Baldacci also noted that his books were his and his alone: “I’ve been doing this for 22 years and I’m on my 42nd book. And that’s all me, there are no co-writers.” Now, whoever in the crime-writing fellowship could he have been referring to? BTW, has anyone noticed the escalation of the balloon war in the International Rights Centre? At the start of the week, C+W’s tables were festooned with balloon “18”s celebrating the firm’s, er, coming to adulthood and the fact that, as an agency, it can now watch the entire big-screen
Management
PUBLISHER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE Nigel Roby 0361
Editorial
EDITOR Philip Jones 0364
DEPUTY EDITOR Benedicte Page 0367
NEWS EDITOR Lisa Campbell 0369
REPORTERS Katherine Cowdrey 0365 Natasha Onwuemezi 0366 Heloise Wood 0368
FEATURES AND INSIGHT EDITOR
Tom Tivnan 0373
CHARTS AND DATA ANALYST Kiera O’Brien 0375
BOOKS EDITOR Alice O’Keeffe 0372
CHILDREN’S EDITOR
Charlotte Eyre 0370 Contributors
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Molly Flatt, Caroline Sanderson
Established in 1858, The Booksell
Established in 1858 The Bookseller incorporates Bent’s Literary Advertiser (est. 1802)
BOOK PREVIEWERS Caroline Sanderson, Fiona Noble, Alison Flood
output of Lars von Trier. A bit of a random date to celebrate? Maybe. An excellent excuse to invite the firm’s longstanding customers and partners to a proper sit-down lunch at every day of this year’s fair? Absolutely. No expense was spared, with real cutlery (having anything other than plastic knives to hand in the IRC is normally unwise), good wine and a delish spread—the paté alone would make Jack Monroe3
renounce veganism. Word to the
wise: the well-dressed, helpful chap serving turns out to be not, in fact, a waiter to whom one might bellow, say, “another glass of Piquepoul, on the double, there’s a good lad”, but fresh-faced C+W agent and Bookseller Rising Star 2017 Richard Pike. Somewhat cruelly, C+W tables are quite near that pathetic espresso cart with its insipid spread of cakes and pastries which, by virtue of simply being there, always has a queue. Now, agents are not normally an envious lot (cough, cough) but there were some might hard stares from folk as they looked over at the C+W bunch feasting like they were at the court of the Sun King. Back to the balloon war. Not to be outdone by
C+W’s “18”s, PFD staffers sprinted out to the near- est balloon shop (where do people get these— does Woolies still exist?) and nabbed themselves balloons P, F and D. And they’re much, much bigger than C+W’s balloons. And they are gold! I await C+W’s response...
If there’s something you would like to share with your old pal Horace (in the strictest confidence, naturellement...), email
horace.bent@
thebookseller.com or tweet @horacebent
Commercial
DIRECTOR OF PUBLISHER RELATIONS Emma Lowe 0362
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
Lara Pace 0393
CLIENT DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Gerard O’hare 0384
ACCOUNT MANAGER Emma Hare 0387
Marketing
EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR Hilary Bell 0385
EVENTS MARKETING MANAGER Briony Morgan 0386
AUDIENCE MARKETING MANAGER
Kirstine Bowen 0371 Online
WEB EDITOR AND PRODUCER Caroline Carpenter 0376
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Francesca Pymm 0363
Production
HEAD OF CENTRAL PRODUCTION Mark Guest 0377
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Sophie Scott-Foss 0378
CREATIVE EDITOR Danny Arter 0379
Finance
FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION CO-ORDINATOR
Anna Marzec 0390
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