One has to wonder if the London Book Fair as we know it even has a future, or if, like it’s US counterpart Book Expo, it’s time to put this aging dog out of its misery.
Surprise, surprise, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair will be a digital event this year as the pandemic’s third wave bites in Italy, forcing the organisers to abandon the fantasy that an in-person event might happen.
Originally postponed from its April dates, the new dates of June 14-17 will now be 100% digital. While the carrot of an in-person event was dangled, few expected it to be meaningful, even if the pandemic had eased enough for an in-person event to be possible.
All importantly that included the event organisers themselves, who never lost focus on the digital element and are now in a position to put all their energies into making sure the online show is the best it can be, as Gianpiero Calzolari, president of BolognaFiere, explained:
The Bologna Children’s Book Fair, BolognaBookPlus and the Bologna Licensing Trade Fair offer a home-from-home for the international publishing community to meet, do business and launch new projects. As international travel remains so uncertain during the continuing global pandemic, and therefore the presence of international participation, the painful decision to postpone the physical fair to 2022 was taken thus allowing us to concentrate on the extensive digital programme in anticipation of meeting in spring 2022 – in Bologna, in person.
Calzolari continued,
We are certain that the vaccination programmes under way across the globe, combined with necessary lockdowns, will be successful in preventing the spread of the virus once and for all, allowing us to bring back BCBF and its parallel initiatives bigger and better than ever next year.
Well, let’s not get too fixated on a return to in-person 2022. The pandemic is nowhere near over, and the long-term effectiveness of the various vaccines out there is quite simply unknowable at this stage. When the trade talks about 2022 as if somehow the pandemic will be history I’m reminded of similar sentiments back in March 2020 as the pandemic first tore around the world and how we let desperate optimism rise above scientific reality and we fantasised that it would be over by the summer/autumn/ Buchmesse/ end of year, March 2021, etc.
We’ll know more in the next month or so about the detail of the online BolognaFiere. What’s important here is that reality has been addressed and the organisers are acting accordingly, in the best interests of the trade, both in Italy and globally.
Per a statement by Jacks Thomas, guest director of BBPlus:
Flexibility is the name of the game in planning any event during these unprecedented times and the transition to a digital only model has been key in our thinking.
Compare the London Book Fair where last year the disgraceful refusal of the organisers to grasp reality led to a complete farce as the LBF was shuttered six days before it was due to begin, and even then only after hundreds of major exhibitors voted with their feet.
This year the new LBF director, Andy Ventris, has so far shown himself to be just as much a candle in the wind, unable to take a stand and do what’s best for the event and the trade, instead telling us a final decision would come at end March only to postpone that until mid-April.
Ventris of course has the illusory carrot of, per UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s dubious assurances, a lifting of all restrictions in June, just a week before the LBF is due to start.
But everyone in the trade knows that even were that to occur, which is at best 50-50 right now, very few will want to risk travelling to and participating in an event of this nature with the pandemic still looming large cross much of the world. And of course the international nature of the LBF is such that it cannot possibly be a meaningful event when much of the world will be unable, let alone willing, to travel.
As Jacks Thomas said of the BBPlus element of Bologna:
Flexibility is the name of the game in planning any event during these unprecedented times and the transition to a digital only model has been key in our thinking.
Other than that the LBF is known to be considering some sort of digital element, Andy Ventris has been noticeably quiet about online options and it’s clear that there is very little planning and very little effort going into digital preparations for LBF21.
Next week when the final decision comes (assuming it isn’t postponed yet again), there’s very little to look forward to. Possibly a token in-person event at which many major players will not participate (HarperCollins among those who have said “no way” to London in-person this year), and possibly a token digital affair.
But token being the operative word. LBF has had over a year to prepare a meaningful digital element for LBF21 that could have run alongside, or in lieu of the in-person event. But LBF chose to sit on the fence and play games with the trade, seemingly having learned nothing from 2020.
One has to wonder if the London Book Fair as we know it even has a future, or if, like it’s US counterpart Book Expo, it’s time to put this aging dog out of its misery and invite new blood with fresh ideas and an understanding of digital’s potential to step up and fly the flag for the UK publishing industry.
