My first London Book Fair was an amazing* experience. It made me realise how lucky I am to work in the field of books and writing. Being surrounded by so many books – and, more importantly, people who love them – was energising.
The world of books is a colourful one. Lush displays of children’s books, coffee table books (some of which were large enough to actually be coffee tables) and art books reminded me why the industry hasn’t mirrored the music business in its rapid move from physical to digital formats. There’s something especially attractive about an origami book, a book you can scribble in, or a book that includes balsa wood. It’s also useful to own a book that you could use to knock an intruder unconscious.
I was there to promote Help For Writers – I’ll be writing a more detailed blog for them soon – but I couldn’t stop my enthusiasm for copy-editing from surfacing from time to time. I hope I managed to convince a few writers of the importance of a good copy-edit!
I found the the wonderful unexpected around every corner – including beautiful pigs.
I was honoured to take part in an Author HQ panel on ‘How to prepare for self-publishing’. I hope people found it useful. Thanks to Fiona Marsh (Midas PR) for chairing the session and to my colleague Nikki Halliwell (Marketing Executive at Help For Writers) and self-published author Will Green (Default Setting) for being on the panel with me. You can’t beat advice from someone who has ‘been there and done that’. Luckily there was only one mic between us so I couldn’t interrupt them too much.
Now it’s time to get some caffeine into my system and start the follow-up…
(*Dipping into the thesaurus in search of a less clichéd word to replace ‘amazing’, I was confronted with the suggestions ‘shocking’ and ‘prodigious’. That, my dear reader, is why you can’t write well by following a set of rules.)
