LBF Report • 17 April 2008 • The SnowBlog
LBF Report
Doesn't it feel like Monday? Even though LBF was tiring enough, I feel like I've had a bit of a break. Effectively, therefore, this is going to be a two day week. Hooray! LBF was fun and we had a great time. I didn't attend any of the seminars (things like that often annoy me, anyway, as they usually consist of the industry either trying to frighten itself into action on something like digitisation, resulting in no action at all regardless of how apposite the message, or placate itself by saying everything's ok. Plus I had important sitting down at our stand to do whenever I had a spare minute). Instead, I had a goodly number of meetings and enough time to have some lovely chance meetings with friends and peers old and new. Tom from Legend Press kept Rob and I entertained throughout (he really is a funny man) even though he was robbed of the UKIPY award (Tom, you won in our hearts) and it was lovely to have Mark Thwaite (clever *and* cute, a dangerous combination), Michael R, George M, George W, John B, Philip W, Suzanne A, Vanessa R, Steve S, the lovely folk from Jarrolds, and plenty of others swing by the stand.
As well as passers by, I had 30-odd meetings with retailers, suppliers, scouts, sales reps from Asia, South Africa, the US, and Australia, agents (yes! agents! and they didn't scratch my eyes out), and other publishers from other countries. Only two of these were disappointing, so that's not bad.
It's not fair to say on here which books were the stars of the show, but suffice to say there was lots of interest for all our various areas, from historical fiction to fantasy, general fiction to cycling. My next job is to chase up all the people who requested review copies and to see what people thought of the copies they took away with them.
Oh yeah, and Matt from BCS brought in his 11 week old baby and I held it (I don't think I've ever held a baby before) and it didn't cry. I call that a good omen. And it had excellent socks and was nice.
All in all - a great three days, happily spent and now I'm strangely rejuvenated!
Emma
Doesn't it feel like Monday? Even though LBF was tiring enough, I feel like I've had a bit of a break. Effectively, therefore, this is going to be a two day week. Hooray! LBF was fun and we had a great time. I didn't attend any of the seminars (things like that often annoy me, anyway, as they usually consist of the industry either trying to frighten itself into action on something like digitisation, resulting in no action at all regardless of how apposite the message, or placate itself by saying everything's ok. Plus I had important sitting down at our stand to do whenever I had a spare minute). Instead, I had a goodly number of meetings and enough time to have some lovely chance meetings with friends and peers old and new. Tom from Legend Press kept Rob and I entertained throughout (he really is a funny man) even though he was robbed of the UKIPY award (Tom, you won in our hearts) and it was lovely to have Mark Thwaite (clever *and* cute, a dangerous combination), Michael R, George M, George W, John B, Philip W, Suzanne A, Vanessa R, Steve S, the lovely folk from Jarrolds, and plenty of others swing by the stand.
As well as passers by, I had 30-odd meetings with retailers, suppliers, scouts, sales reps from Asia, South Africa, the US, and Australia, agents (yes! agents! and they didn't scratch my eyes out), and other publishers from other countries. Only two of these were disappointing, so that's not bad.
It's not fair to say on here which books were the stars of the show, but suffice to say there was lots of interest for all our various areas, from historical fiction to fantasy, general fiction to cycling. My next job is to chase up all the people who requested review copies and to see what people thought of the copies they took away with them.
Oh yeah, and Matt from BCS brought in his 11 week old baby and I held it (I don't think I've ever held a baby before) and it didn't cry. I call that a good omen. And it had excellent socks and was nice.
All in all - a great three days, happily spent and now I'm strangely rejuvenated!