As we’ve reported in a previous edition of The Hot Sheet and in a follow-up, persistent questions are surfacing this spring about how major trade-show events like London Book Fair (LBF), BookExpo America (BEA), and Frankfurt Book Fair (FBM) roll on, year after year, with minimal author involvement, especially on the indie side.
Even trade authors are generally featured only as product-placement operatives, giving readings and signings for their publishers—maybe a breakfast speech to a crowd of insiders—after which they’re whisked away from the trade-show floor again.
Better known in the UK than in the States, the commentator called Agent Orange is a London-based literary agent whose opinions frequently are not what publishers like to hear. He or she uses the pseudonym for that reason, but we can assure you that we know who Agent Orange is, and the person is a key player in the industry—talking to the industry.
In “Who Is the Book Fair For?” at the Bookseller, Agent Orange calls the trade-show format “a positive orgy of unproductiveness” that is “crying out for reinvention.” Agent Orange makes the case that the format of the event itself is over the hill in digital times and argues for an overhaul of who is included in the “trade,” when we speak of it, writing:
“Book fairs should be about rights and distribution and all the nuts and bolts of the business, but they should also be about showcasing books and authors to consumers and the whole panoply of people who are part fan and part professional; they are just as much ‘the trade’ as booksellers and distributors. Publishers are expending huge amounts of effort building crime, romance, and SFF communities, reaching out to bloggers, book groups, and to superfans. Authors are asked to do ever more marketing and PR on behalf of books and yet, at the showpiece events of the year, all those people are excluded. That doesn’t make sense.”
Bottom line: Tensions are rising, especially as BEA arrives (May 11–13), looking a bit lost in Chicago instead of in its usual New York setting. We’ll have more for you in the aftermath of BEA, where Agent Orange might feel that the independent authors’ arrangement on the show floor is—as he or she described LBF’s Author HQ program—“way out in the boondocks” of the venue. With uPublishU conference gone from the BEA offerings, some will indeed see a retreat underway in terms of author outreach.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
