The London Book Fair 2016

Yesterday I attended the London Book Fair. This was my second visit, so I had a much better idea of what to expect, compared to last year.

The London Book Fair. It's massive! (This is just one hall of many.)

What I didn't expect was to be greeted by someone who I had only previously met via Facebook, by name. So thanks to Simon Frith* of Panini comics for introducing himself.

Purely by chance, I then found myself at the Funny Books talk, organised by my friend Alex Milway (the man behind the 'This Book is Funny!' campaign), which featured Gary Northfield, Philip Ardagh, and Kate Davies (senior editor at Walker Books).

Gary Northfield sniffing the water, just to be sure.

Some of Alex Milway's books at the fair.

Some of my books were also there!

Since 23rd April 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, there was a significant focus on the Bard, including a pop-up Globe Theatre.

The Globe in all its glory!

Adult colouring books were everywhere as well, but you won't find me complaining about that! ;-)

This is where the real work happens at the London Book Fair, in the International Rights Centre.

I had a few meetings to attend after that, and it was good to meet up with Lydia Gittins again (formerly with Rebellion Publishing but now with Titan Books).

But at the end of the day I found myself at the Snowbooks stand, just in time for the Independent Publishers Guild drinks. Which was nice.

And who should I bump into there, but Tim Bayley, who has contributed a very special story to the Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu Kickstarter. More drinks at the pub followed, so all in all a very successful day. :-)


* Simon is another life-long devotee of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks!

Thought for the Day and a New Year's Resolution, of sorts...

"I like to follow Stephen King’s advice that if you write a page a day in your spare time (maybe 300 words), you’ll have a book in a year. And obviously, if you’re writing a children’s book, you can write a lot of books in a year if you keep that speed up."

~ Alex Milway, children's author and illustrator

That's my aim for 2013...

Alex Milway's Mythical 9th Division

I have to say that I'm getting quite excited about the release of Alex Milway's new book Operation Robot Storm (not to mention the also forthcoming Terror of the Deep). But his teaser twitpic off all the Mythical Division badges has just upped my child-like excitement ten-fold. Check them out for yourself. (Apparently there are even genuine cloth versions*!)

* It was Alex who got me into creating badges linked to my own work too.

A triumph of hope over logistics

Anyone who's ever seriously wanted to make a living - any kind of living - as a writer will have heard of the slush pile. It's that collection of unsolicited manuscripts either sent directly to the publisher by authors, or sent through an agent not known to the publisher. It collects dusk at the corner of an office until, teetering under its own weight, some poor unpaid assistant or junior editor is given the task of trawling through it, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff - and there's a lot of chaff.

Many publishers publicise on their websites that they do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. However, there is always the secret hope that a trawl through the slush pile will result in the discovery of the Next Big Thing. (A case in point would be J K Rowling at the first Harry Potter book.)

There’s an interesting article on the Guardian website about publishers’ slush piles. My experience of the slush pile is this: the only time I think I probably came close to it was when I sent my initial proposal for a Fighting Fantasy gamebook to Marc Gascoigne, the FF consultant editor at the time. The difference with this arrangement was that Marc's job was to go through every unsolicited submission and give feedback as appropriate. Thanks to his nurturing efforts, eventually my second proposal - Spellbreaker - made it all the way through to publication. Since then, everything else I have written has come off the back of that first book, either directly through contacts I had made or as a result of being able to say to other publishers, 'Look, I've already been published' which has been enough to at least get them to look at anything I've sent them.

Of course many people try to get an agent before trying to submit anything to a publisher. I don't have an agent yet (but any agent reading this should feel free to get in touch) but I have plenty of writer friends who do.

My suggestion to anyone wanting to become published is to know the market you're writing for and, if you are going to pitch to an agent or publisher, follow their guidelines for doing just that to the letter. With them receiving so many manuscripts week in week out, you don't want to give them any excuse to throw yours out before they've even read it. And, of course, you want to appear professional. Writing for a living is a profession after all.

I have never submitted a complete manuscript without it having been commissioned first, which has inevitably save a lot of heartache, not to mention time, along the way.

(Thanks to Alex Milway over at The Mousehunter Blog for alerting me to the piece from The Guardian.)