Every book fair I take pictures of our stand, so the staff who can’t make it up to visit get to see what all the fuss is about. This year I thought I’d try to tell the story of the fair in pictures. So without further ado…
T minus one day to LBF
11:00am - We turn up to Earl’s Court on Sunday morning faced with an empty stand…four or five hours later everything is in place and ready to go. Dummies, books, blads etc. all in their proper places. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the stand in perfect order 
5:00pm – We head off to check into our hotel for the week and head out for a well deserved dinner. The view from my room was particularly interesting this year!
Day One
8:30am – The sales team descend on the stand ready to sell, sell, sell!
9:00am – The fair is is full swing, and for the next two days there’s barely room to move around the stand. The sales execs have meetings every half an hour from 9am – 18:00. Over the whole fair that adds up to over 200 meetings for the Foreign Sales team alone!
9:05am – This year’s display arrives! Carried by our intrepid Art Director through the rush hour on the train, it made it unscathed! Last year we had Knit Your Own Royal Wedding which you may remember causing a bit of a stir; this year it’s Paper London. Not quite as attention grabbing as the knitted royal family, but in Olympic year when London will be the focus of the world, it has everything you need to construct your own miniature metropolitan masterpiece!
Day Two
The fair continues apace. It’s so busy that I didn’t have time to think about taking a single photo.
Day Three
8:30am – One unlucky member of our team had her birthday at the fair, but our Rights Director, Meike Schoenknecht made it as nice as possible. Check out the sparkles!
2:15pm – I finally made it off the stand to take a look around. I’d been meaning to look down on the fair for years!
5:30pm – The stand starts being pulled down around our ears and in an hour or so everything is boxed up and ready to go back to the warehouse, where it will wait until the Frankfurt Book Fair. Only a short 6 months away!
If you got this far, thanks for reading. See you next fair!
