The London Book Fair is online this year, and lasts for two weeks, starting tomorrow (22 June 2021). Having registered, activated my account, and trawled through the sessions, the following in particular appeal to me, in no particular order:

My Schedule

How has Brexit impacted the bookselling trade so far
How to Hook Your Book.
Licensing: How to build a brand from a book.
Modernise the Author Experience with a Royalty Statement App.
Closing the gap: Why access to books matters for children around the world.
How publishers are transitioning from book-centric to content-led publishing.
YA Spotlight: How To Get Noticed in a Crowded Market.
How to Get Published.

Some notes on my schedule

One or two of the items on my schedule will probably raise a few eyebrows amongst the people who know me and know my work, so here are a few brief explanations about some of them.

The Brexit effect

I need to write a bit more about this, but I think Brexit has created a few hurdles in the area of copyright. I believe that the UK was going to adopt the EU’s copyright directive, but that now that is in doubt. I attended a Westminster Forum conference on this issue a short while ago, but haven’t yet finished reading the transcript of talks. I’m hoping that the session on Brexit will shed some light on copyright and other aspects of the effects of Brexit on the book trade.

How to Hook Your Book, and YA: How to get noticed in a crowded market

I don’t write Young Adult fiction, but I should think at least some of the suggestions for getting noticed will apply more generally. Getting noticed is a real problem, and getting worse. Back in 2016 I reviewed a book called The Content Code which addressed this very problem. In that review I wrote:

“I looked at [the profile of a famous person] the other day: someone who has been on the scene for decades, has thousands of Twitter followers, and is a well-known face on the speaker circuit. Last time I looked, a video of him being interviewed had been shared 15 times.

Why is this the case, especially considering the fact that, in percentage terms, I had a much higher response rate to my articles 16 years ago than I do now?”

— Terry Freedman

That was five years ago, and the situation is far more difficult now in my opinion.

Licensing: How to build a brand from a book

I haven’t done enough of this myself, but I think if you write a book you should make it work for you by generating income in as many ways as possible.

How to Get Published

At the moment I’m not interested in getting published. The next time I write a book I’ll almost certainly go down the publishing route. Still, it’s always useful to learn from people in the publishing business, especially as I might change my mind about the publishing route I’ll take.

Some notes about the London Book Fair and its website

The sessions are typically very short (around half an hour), which is good from the point of view of avoiding eye strain. From my experience of attending short sessions at the London Book Fair in the past, you can learn a surprising amount in such a short period.

There’s a My Schedule tool that lets you add sessions to your own personalised schedule. That’s good. You can even export your schedule as a pdf document. That’s good too. But why on earth can’t you export the schedule to a calendar?

Something I think could be really useful is the facility to set up an Instant Meeting. It means you can invite someone for a private chat. The room remains open for half an hour. I don’t think you can schedule a meeting in advance, so from that point of view it’s not as good as Zoom or Google Meet. However, I suppose if you get chatting to someone in a session, or if you know someone who will be online at the same time as you, you could set up an Instant Meeting, send them the link, and thereby stay within the London Book Fair environment.

There’s a useful search tool to find other delegates you might like to make contact with. Indeed, you can insert ‘matchmaking information’ on your profile. Mine reads: