Morning all,
Last week I spent five nights in London for the London Book Fair. It was fantastic, informative and inspiring, to say the least.
I started my few days away by flying into Gatwick and making my way to the centre of London, making it to Earls Court within the hour and then letting out that breath I felt as though I had been holding all morning as I checked into my temporary home, the Westbury Hotel (which I cannot recommend highly enough by the way). After a few hours of planning and a tube/train/bus ride I began my learning pilgrimage with a lecture by Smashwords founder Mark Coker at Kingston university. It was a couple of hours very well spent, Mark was a great speaker and his information was invaluable. I came away not only ready to take my career as an Indie Author further but with an insight into the ebook publishing that I would never have gained by self-learning and tiny community of aspiring authors I have found via Facebook and twitter.
The fair itself is much more aimed at those already in the book industry and has only opened itself up to the authors in the last few years. The 'Author HQ' area was small, but incredibly set up and had numerous seminars that ran over the three days. I tried my best to sit in on as many as I could, pen and paper at the ready as well as my thinking head on. I loved the feel of it, the industry people I met and the many authors who were there. Each of us were in different stages of our careers, my novel is already on Amazon and while I hadn't really considered that anything too huge before the fair, I certainly came away having realised I was a fair few steps ahead of a lot of the aspiring writers there. My sales were impressing those who I spoke with and I exchanged business cards (yes, I did go with cards at the ready) with lots of people.
All in all, I am very glad I went along and could keep on writing about those days in greater detail. For now though, I shall leave it as a huge well done to all those who planned and delivered those amazing few days, and to my fellow authors: write, write, write!
