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| My ID badge, how exciting! |
The fair mainly for trade, there are big auctions for publishers to buy the rights for books and the exhibition hall is full of stands where publishers and literary agents have meetings to sort out rights and deals. It's really exciting to be around. Alongside the trade, the fair lets in visitors who can attend seminars and can attempt to catch important people for a chat between important meetings.
I've not written very much about my career aspirations on this blog, but I'm going to start now. I started to think about working in publishing because of two things; my Kindle and Twitter. When I tell people I have a Kindle responses are mixed, a lot of people say that since I like reading so much I should support real, actual books. I've always thought that's a pointless kind of traditional, but it got me thinking about how the whole industry of books is changing and just as readers have to adapt to it, so do publishers. Around the same time I joined Twitter and because I plan on submitting a novel to publishers at some point in my life I started following relevant people on Twitter. This then resulted in me realising that I would really like to do their job, particularly using social media as a link between the author and the reader.
My increasing interest in publishing has coincided with my decreasing interest in my English degree (there's a rant knocking about in my 'Thinking Aloud' section that explains my disillusion with the subject I've always loved). Part of rebelling against my degree has been reading a tonne of Young Adult fantasy. Ideally, I would like to be a publicist for a publishing company and ideally I would work in YA fiction. So there, we're all caught up on where my life is going, in a nutshell.
Book Fair then. I rocked up to Earl's Court at 9.15 this morning and was pretty overwhelmed by how many publishing companies there are in this country. I quickly started to scribbling down names, I have so much research to do!
The first seminar I went to was called 'How to Get into Publishing', I met a nice girl from Durham called Kate. It was an interesting seminar that covered how publishing has changed in the last ten years and what new skills publishing companies are looking for. I've never felt so utterly talentless in my life! The four panellists were talking about marketing strategies and software systems - looks like I've got some homework.
The next seminar I went to was more specific to my skill set... 'Tweet to Woo', when dossing about on the internet is part of the job description, I'm interested. Seriously though, this seminar was very interesting. There were three panellists, Joe from Penguin, Tom from Lonely Planet and Julia from Wiley. Between the three of them they looked at different ways to use Twitter and other social media platforms (Facebook, Pintrest, Google+, Tumblr etc.) to publicise a company or author. They discussed the sliding scale between being professional and being relatable and finding the balance between tweeting about what you're doing and retweeting what other people are doing.
The real highlight was chatting to Joe from Penguin afterwards, he's a publicist. I asked him about getting work experience in publicity for a publishing company and he was really encouraging about my chances and gave me some tips on what to get involved in and try out over the next few years, so watch this space!
Other things I learnt about myself today include the fact that I hate Oxford Street and I am irretrievably incapable of reading maps/floorplans.
I should be posting some book reviews over the next few days, but I'll try not to swamp you - I know you're not used to having much reading material from me!
xo
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