twistntales @ London Book Fair

Book Fairs are happy places to be. One gets to meet "books" people - authors, publishers, others in the books trade - and readers !

twistntales was in the London Book Fair in April this year, catching on with what's happening in the trade, who's coming to India when, what and how of things. As small but independent booksellers, we felt it important to build bridges, establish new contacts and generally have a good "dekho" at the book scene.

India was the "market focus" this year boasting one of the largest English reading populations of the World. The "India Section" was interesting, with almost 78 Indian authors participating, including the bigwigs like Vikram Seth. We had our very own Ajit Harisinghani with "One Life to Ride" (posing above) from Pune (Copies available @ twistntales)

The Book Fair itself was interesting with lots of new products being launched (apart from books), the most interesting being an ATM for books ! An Any Time Machine for printing books on demand when you run out of copies was a big hit amongst bookstore owners ! Besides, authors and publishers, there were others like Tulika and Zubaan (regulars at twistntales know these publications well) who were working with NGOs promoting the cause of reading amongst schoolchildren in the UK.

One also took this opportunity to visit bookstores in all major/ minor towns of England and Scotland, apart from the pilgrimages to William Wordsworth's Dove's Cottage and The World of Beatrix Potter bringing alive both the daffodils and Peter Rabbit in childlike enthusiasm to us. But that will be the topic of another post, another day !