This Year I attended The London Book Fair for the first time. The fair is considered to be the second largest [1] in the world and is where publishers, authors and other book professionals gather to exhibit their products and make rights deals, over the span of three days. However, for me it was an opportunity to network with these professionals and learn about how they got to where they were.

On the very first day we walked from our Airbnb, and I was shocked at the sheer size of the Olympia as we approached the southern façade and approached the main entrance. As we passed through, I was overwhelmed by the thousands of people wandering around the hundreds of stands and the roar of it all. My anxiety passed quickly, and I began to enjoy wandering around the stalls and examining what was on display. After an hour of this I attended my first seminar about young trailblazers in publishing. I found them all inspiring, especially Selina Brown and her particularly poignant quote “build it and they will come” [2]. After this I felt much more comfortable wandering around the Olympia as I realised that every one of those panellists and in fact everyone in the whole place had been where I was at some point.

Despite this newfound confidence, I was still unable to speak to any of the exhibiters as they were so busy. The next day was more eventful as I arrived early to attend what turned out to be a fascinating interview with world renowned games creator Dan Houser who said he thought that books and games had a similar relationship to films and games and discussed his upcoming Absurdaverse project which includes a novel that will act as a companion to the main game [3]. I had never thought about books being able to complement games before and as someone who often plays them this was something to think about for the future. After this I spent much of the day wandering around the fair again and examining more stalls but around 4:00 I attended the illustrators networking event where I managed to speak to some freelancers who were very concerned about the use of AI on book covers. After this we went to the Publishing Scotland drinks reception where I had an engaging conversation with Amy from Luath press and befriended some other students interested in publishing from Scotland.

The final day was much more engaging as most of the stalls had free time to chat, so I spent the whole day speaking to a wide range of publishers from all over the world including some from South Korea, The USA and Britain. I found all these people to be kind and passionate as they were excited to talk to me about their careers and interested in what I was wanting to do in the future. I also received some gifts from them which included two ARCs, tote bags and a massive discount on a brand-new hardback edition of The Great Gatsby.

To conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed the book fair and would strongly recommend it to any student interested in books

References

[1] Yang. L. (2013) The 41st London Book Fair: Chinese Dragon Distinguishes itself in “Market Focus”, China Book international, Available at: [http://www.xzbu.com/1/view-3899882.htm] (Accessed 03 May 2025)

[2] Brown, S. (2025), How To Get into Publishing with the 2025 Trailblazers, 11th of March, London

[3] Houser, D, Osili-Wood, E. (2025) Storytelling and World Building from Video Games to Audio Fiction to Novels: In Conversation with Dan Houser, 12th of March 2025, London