At 5pm today, the doors will close on this year’s London Book Fair. What have we learned from the publishing industry’s major annual conference?
First, most publishers and agents agree that the e-book will soon outstrip the paperback. This, insiders claim, is an opportunity. Speaking at an event on Tuesday, Corrine Turner of Ian Fleming Publications argued that the e-book was more flexible than the strict format of the paperback, which means that publishers can reach a more diverse range of customers. Production costs are also significantly less, so an ever greater number of books can be published to exploit niche markets across the globe.
The upshot is that the days of vanity publishing are numbered – trust a convocation of publishers to arrive at that conclusion. The market may be depressed (March 2011 saw the worst performance since 2005), but some of the big-wigs are in bullish mood.
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