The London Book Fair and a bribe

Yes, it's that cover again - but bear with me, it's relevant.

I’ve always been partial to a little bribery and corruption as long as I’m on the receiving end of the profits, so for a change this will be a mercifully short blog which ends with an offer you may find it hard to refuse.

First, though, some abbreviated thoughts on the London Book Fair, around which I wandered aimlessly for two of its three days last week. We all know how many hundreds of thousands of books are being produced each year but, sitting in our studies or kitchens or attics or yachts or sheds or wherever as we scribble our masterpieces, we still manage to generate the notion that readers will snap up our babies the minute we let them out. But when you see row upon row of stalls, with crowds milling round them all, smartly dressed people sitting at tables with impressive document holders before them deep in earnest discussions with other movers and shakers, huge adverts for books by people you’ve already heard of and who hardly need the PR, you start to think that the wee label you’ve pinned to yourself which identifies you as an AUTHOR is the equivalent of wearing a yellow sack, ringing a bell and shouting ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ as you move through it all.

At the same time, it gives a sort of smug satisfaction that all these people are only here and only earning a living because writers write books. When it’s laid before you in this way, with translators, little independent publishers, foreign rights, niche markets, huge publishing empires and God knows what else, it’s a pulsating proof that the industry is enormous and dynamic. So vast, in fact, that you get this ambivalent feeling that your ambitions are presumptuous and yet there must be a wee corner in it somewhere for you.

But it doesn’t feel like the place that you can go up to someone on one of the stalls and say ‘Hey, I’ve written this great book. Want to read it?’ The response would range from a puzzled, concerned look to an old Anglo-Saxon invitation to go away. My impression, in fact, was that this wasn’t about books, but about deals. And that’s fine because that’s how it works. We just have to make sure one or more of our books is/are part of those deals.

Anyway, those are the impressions I came away with. Now to the bribery. I’ve already told you that The Sparrow Conundrum is supposed to be funny and I’ve encouraged you to contribute to the funds which will buy my tax haven property by buying it. But for five lucky people who haven’t, I have a little deal. On Smashwords, the ebook version sells for a ridiculously low $2.99 (about £1.80). It already has 2 5-star reviews on Amazon UK and is obviously the best and funniest book that’s been written in this room for well over a week. So … all you have to do is leave a comment on this blog. It doesn’t have to be long – just something to show you’ve been here. If more than five comments appear (dream on, Bill), I’ll put the names in a hat and choose five, each of whom will get a coupon code to buy the book at half-price. That’s $1,50 (90p) for a masterpiece. You’ve got until the end of the month. Good luck.

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