As London Book Fair (LBF) looms next week and BookExpo America (BEA) follows, we’re again in the awkward season in which the industry tries to accommodate independent authors at events that were simply not created to include them. At BEA, an author breakfast is not a place for authors to score bagels but a staged event at which Sebastian Junger reads from his upcoming release; it’s an event that features an author, not one that caters to them.
Although you don’t see inside a trade show’s international rights center unless you’re an agent, scout, or editor with approved access, the rights center is the hub of the event. It’s where international rights are being sold to publishers from around the world. That’s what great trade shows are designed to do—the operative word is not show but trade.
As an example of how central a rights center is to a trade show, consider the largest of the year, October’s Frankfurt Book Fair. It has just sold out all 460 tables in its huge rights center, which is named the Literary Agents and Scouts Centre (or LitAg). What’s more, Frankfurt will open the LitAg a day early this year.
Rights are bigger than ever, because as the content glut grows only deeper, there can be surer money in capturing advances from overseas rights deals than from actual book sales. When a title is up against everything ever published (digital means never having to say you’re out of print), then your best hope of making some money off that book may lie in selling its rights to a publisher in the Czech Republic or Turkey or—especially for children’s books—China.
Four years ago, London Book Fair led the way in author inclusion by creating what then was called its Author Lounge for author-attendees. Its name was later changed to Author HQ, and it’s again part of the fair’s offerings. As we can tell from this year’s programming, one of the tricky parts in the planning of author events is predicting how experienced authors in the HQ area will be. There’s a session defining the roles of agents and publishers, and then there’s one on characterization with a sophisticated craftsman, the author Peter James. There’s a session about the work of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and several sessions on self-publishing, some staged by Amazon, a sponsor. In the London model, an author pays a one-time door admission to the fair (£35 if bought in advance) and then has access to the floor, including HQ sessions.
The BEA model, begun three years ago, has always entailed requiring the author to buy a spot in the on-floor offering. This takes the form of a special exhibitor table and chair, costing $1,900. Programming is on an associated stage and presented by sponsoring author-service companies. Table-buying authors are given a fact sheet of information and instructions; the concept is that the author will use his or her table to display books and talk to interested BEA goers about them—plus, an autographing session is included in the deal. During BEA’s public-facing event, BookCon, authors have found they can sign and give away a great many copies of their books.
The Frankfurt option for independent authors is normally a day of programming, usually on the public-opening Saturday after the fair’s official trade days. Things are still being put together for this fall’s fair, so we don’t have details yet.
Bottom line: The perfect model has yet to be found for a meaningful indie author presence at these biggest trade shows. That’s less a function of trade-publishing attitudes than of the dilemma about how to offer value to authors who are working outside traditional channels. The rights centers are not places that indie authors can go, and the dream of being spotted at your BEA table by an acquisitions editor rushing back to her publishing-house pavilion is up there with the dream of having a film producer spot the perfect face in a Los Angeles drugstore. However, there’s much to be learned about how the industry works from seeing it in action in the sales arena of a trade show, so indies most likely to find a good reason to attend are those looking to network and familiarize themselves with the internal workings of the publishing business.
Editor’s note: London Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair links are updated annually and will not reflect 2016 conference content.
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.
