The London Bookfair

I was at the Bookfair yesterday and it was markedly different from last year when the ash cloud had kept a huge number of overseas visitors and exhibitors at home. Although this did mean that you could manage to walk between stands in less than the ten minutes it seems to take when it is heaving, it was nice to see the buzz back yesterday.

As I wondered the aisles I made a note of a few alternative prizes I might like to award. They are as follows:

Most extravagant (and maybe a little ridiculous) stand: Goes to - Hachette!

It has two floors! And therefore a staircase! It is bigger than my house!

Best find of the day: Goes to - the ladies loos at the far end of EC2. Clean, big and virtually empty. None of the squashing and squeezing that goes on in the EC1 loos. It's worth the walk.

Most enterprising author award: Goes to - Dr Peter Altman who was wearing a t-shirt that was printed front and back with 'Wanted! Publisher for my popular science book' and then listed his name and number. 

Platform 9 and 3/4 award: Goes to - Stand J200. I searched for ages and never found this stand which is a shame as it had two indies on it that I was hoping to see. Short of running into the wall à la Harry Potter I'm not sure where else I could have looked!

The award for taking the most circuitous route to anywhere they wanted to go: Goes to - me! My route round the fair must have looked something like this:

And finally a top tip for your visit: The small/indie publishers have much nicer freebies!