Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of attending a Mini Publishing Fair in the lovely town of Frome (found in Somerset, England). This was part of the Frome Festival, which has a fabulous line-up should you be in the area! I’m definitely going to try to get to some more of the events.
I always think that small publishing fairs are good places to start for little bloggers like me – I’m not going to jump into huge events like the London Book Fair just yet! I’m still a little bit shy about the whole networking thing, so this was just perfect for me.
The focus was upon the presses used by local authors, a well as a few smaller, independent presses. I was particularly intrigued by Uniformbooks (whose covers are stunning), The Mystery Press, and Matador, a self-publishing company. It was really interesting to see that there were a couple self-publishing companies present – I love to think that with self-publishing, increasingly daring material may be published and enjoyed!
I also managed to squeeze in a little bit of time at Hunting Raven Books, a truly fabulous independent bookstore that I hope to visit frequently this summer! They were very kind when I realised that I’d forgotten my wallet at home (I’m a plum, what can I say) and offered to hold books for me. These included The Dog Who Dared to Dream by Sun-mi Hwang, and The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
All in all, I had a wonderful time – as I said on Twitter, pottering around and talking about books is one of my favourite pastimes. I can’t wait until I can (hopefully) do this for a living, too!
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