Well, the London Book Fair is over for another year and I must say, I found it way more exciting than the last time I was there.
Partly, this was because I was with a group of MA Publishing students and it was their first time. I love helping people to learn about publishing, and my chums dutifully accompanied me around the stands as I said hi to some old friends and waxed lyrical about the opportunities and merits of training from the PA, PTC and ALPSP.
Having experienced the intense focus of working an LBF stand, I found it liberating this year to wander around, observe, listen and just absorb what I was told - mostly about Amazon a.k.a. 'The Death Star'. Refreshing, but not likely to happen again for some time!
This is such an exciting time for publishers - granted, it's still not ALL happy thoughts, but I found it mostly upbeat nonetheless. The mood has changed from one of 'old geezers busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as the ship is subsumed by the digital tsunami', as Publishing Perspectives' LBF edition put it, to one of optimism. There was definitely a sense of 'we can get through this', although a definitive method has by no means become clear.
Predictably, most seminars talked of business models and careers, with both citing the same (obvious) reason for change - digital. In the CEO Keynote, Richard Charkin challenged the question of 'Is our business model sustainable?' by asking whether the current business model is even desirable. "We have an opportunity to create new [business models] from an economic and environmental point of view," he said, "an opportunity to grasp."
This is certainly interesting from the student point of view since so much talk is of publishers resisting change, their inclination being to 'tweak' the current model to fit the new digital landscape, rather than inventing new ones. Here was the Executive Director of Bloomsbury advocating innovation - cool.
However, the students with me raised the point that seminars such as this didn't fill in some of the gaps they expected them to. Lectures can only cover so much and some found it odd that the Keynote didn't outline the business models themselves. There are many reasons for that but it's a genuine question for the students - when asked to analyse publishing business models, how do you find out what they are?
As a result, in some respects the LBF wasn't what they expected, but they all found it an enjoyable learning experience. As in any industry, they quickly discovered that some publishers were incredibly friendly and helpful, yet some were incredibly dismissive - understandable given the pressure one can be under, after all, it is work. However, the biggest surprise was the other people that, like them, are trying to break into the industry.
There is always talk about the merit of internships in careers seminars, however, in publishing especially, there is an ongoing debate about those who can AFFORD to take up the mostly badly paid/voluntary positions available. The students with me were certainly put off by some extremely polished 'Made in Chelsea' clones discussing the fact that Daddy would be expected to buy them a house in town. They actually said that they might change their mind about publishing if that is who they would have to work with!
Of course I explained that not everyone is like that, but there's no denying it's a problem. Perhaps somehow, in the quest to innovate we can also alleviate any perceived elitism.
