director at Pan Macmillan, agreed. “The
industry is feeding off the chaos in the
world outside,” he said, “rather than
being depressed by it.”
The fair officially kicked off just one
day after a vote in the British Parliament
cleared the way for Britain to begin the
formal process of exiting the E.U. The
vote means a two-year clock will soon
start ticking on the U.K.’s trade negotia-
tions with E.U. members.
“The U.K. now has around two years
to work out what type of country it wants
to be in the future,” said Stephen Lotinga,
CEO of the U.K. Publishers Association,
at a standing-room-only panel on March
14. “One of the reasons U.K. publishing
is so successful is because of the type of
country we are—open, diverse, interna-
lion to Diep; in France,
Fayard bought the titles.)
In addition to a lack of big books
coming out of London, there also seemed
to be a dearth of seven-figure deals.
Nonetheless, international publishers
and agents reported brisk business.
Many said that the political uncertainty
in the U.K. and America had infused
this year’s fair with energy. “I think it’s
a case of hands across the ocean,“ said
Will Atkinson, managing director and
publisher of the U.K.’s Atlantic Books.
“There are bad things happening on
both sides [of the Atlantic],” he added,
referring to the uncertainty surrounding
Brexit in the U.K. and the Trump
administration in the U.S. “It’s a group
hug.”
Anthony Forbes Watson, managing
News
p
ho
t
ob
yan
d
rew
r
i
ch
a
rd
al
ba
n
es
e
Above: The uncertain political
climate did not deter large
crowds from attending this
year’s LBF. Right: Ian Hudson
(l.) of DK and Stephen
Lotinga of the U.K. Publishers
Association discussed the
impact of Brexit on publishing.
Publishers
Keep Calm
And Carry
On
Despite political
uncertainty, it was
a busy, buoyant 2017
London Book Fair
If the narrow hallways of Olympia seemed a little more jammed than usual at the 2017 London Book Fair,
they were. Although final attendance has
yet to be announced, LBF director Jacks
Thomas confirmed that pre-registrations
for this year’s fair, which ran March
14–16, were up by a double-digit percentage, likely boosted by a weak pound
and two straight years of positive
industry sales.
With talk at the fair focused on the
record-breaking advance (reported at
$65 million) Barack and Michelle Obama
earned for a pair of books they will write,
no single book emerged as the big one of
the fair. As many insiders predicted, the
nature of the Obamas’ deal—which was
announced a week before the fair and left
the industry in shock over the sticker
price—was the subject of gossip at the
industry meeting. (With Penguin
Random House announcing at the start
of the fair that it would publish the two
books internationally in English,
Spanish, and German through its subsidiaries around the globe, some of the biggest foreign deals for the Obama books
came from the Netherlands and France.
Dutch rights went for a rumored € 3 mil-