Mark's Say: The London Book Fair

I hadn’t been to London or the London Book Fair since 2011; that had been a miserable visit. The weather was cold and drizzly; the book industry was going through an existential crisis as an avalanche of ebooks seemed to presage the demise of the printed book and of bookshops. A few months later the then minister for small business famously predicted that online sales would wipeout all but a few bookshops; it was a prospect that had certainly crossed my mind. Fortunately, here we are, and in March this year my son Joe and I went to the fair again.

We were going to buy some bargains, show Joe his first big international book fair, meet some publishers, and look at the London bookshops. The bargains were good and we picked out quite a few that I’m sure are going to delight – watch the bargain pages here and subscribe to our enews to make sure you don’t miss out. Across the aisle from the bargain books we ran into Michael Heyward and Penny Hueston from Text Publishing; they were excited about getting lots of overseas interest in a young adult novel due to be published in August, It Sounded Better in My Head by Nina Kenwood (Readings’ own marketing manager!) and Sand Talk – How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta (September). Scribe’s Henry Rosenbloom was enthusing about his purchase of The Guest House for Young Widows: the Women of ISIS by Azadeh Moaveni (October). On the floor, Bloomsbury raved about a new US author Lisa Taddeo and her book, Three Women (July). Reading an advance copy of this biography of three women has made one of our staff miss their bus stop twice recently!

Bookshops are a window to a city and Joe was keen to see Libreria in the East End. Beautifully designed, it arranges its books thematically to encourage discovery – examples include ‘wanderlust’, ‘love’ and ‘enchantment for the disenchanted’. We also attended an inspiring event with Tessa Hadley (her new book, Late in the Day, is marvellous) who talked about the Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg (Voices in the Evening) at the beautiful Daunt Books in Marylebone. James Daunt, the owner (and also managing director of Waterstones), joined us afterwards for a conversation about bookselling in the UK. It’s very different from here, where Amazon has driven many independent booksellers out of business. Under James’s direction, Waterstones, which was on the verge of going out of business in 2011, has turned around. James also discussed Waterstones’ recent takeover of the famous (and glorious) Foyles, and how he sees its future.

Back here at Readings, we are very proud of The Readings Children’s Book Prize, now in its sixth year. This year’s winner is The Peacock Detectives by Carly Nugent. Our judges describe it as ‘a warm and engaging story for middle-grade readers about dealing with change and finding out who you are.’ So if you know a child aged 9–12, this is may be the perfect book for them!


Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings