I headed to London Book Fair
again this year, but this time with more understanding of what the event was
about and what I could hope to achieve from it. Earl’s Court was full of the
usual hustle and stress as the industry’s players filled four days with
meetings, promotions, book launches and signings, panel talks and networking.
At least this time I came prepared with comfortable shoes and lots of water.
First I spent some time walking
through the stands and chatting to publishers, mainstream and small press
alike, introducing myself and finding out a little bit about who did what
within the business and what their big releases for the year were. I didn’t
find many opportunities to talk fantasy unfortunately as this is not a genre
event, but some of the small press publishers in particular were receptive to
the idea of a genre writer and reviewer and I came away with some titles I
would otherwise probably have never come across. Reviews on those will be
coming soon.
I attended a panel on ‘turning
social media into sales’, which I then discovered was the title of a book published
by the panel’s main speaker Guy Clapperton. The talk wasn’t quite what I had
expected – more geared towards how businesses can make social media work for
them, rather than focusing on writers using social media – but I did come away
with a few pieces of good advice:
Don’t overkill on self-promotion.
Be conversational, engaging and
helpful.
Use hashtags to your advantage
but do not hijack inappropriate ones to push your wares.
Start small with social media but
make time for it.
Remember social media is there to
support the business, not the other way around.
Social media was the hot topic of
the fair as far as I could tell. More coming up in blog two.
Elloise Hopkins.
No comments:
Post a Comment