London Book Fair

The London Book Fair (LBF) is a large book-publishing trade fair held annually, usually in April, in London, England.

The fair grew out of a librarian's trade show called the The Specialist Publishers Exhibition for Librarians (SPEX) that was started on 5 November 1971 by Lionel Leventhal "as a tabletop affair in the basement of The Berners Hotel", Leventhal wanted to give small publishers a platform to easily show their titles to librarians, and so the idea of SPEX was born. "The location was chosen for its proximity to the Library Association, and the date because it coincided with a monthly council meeting there, which would be attended by a number of out of town librarians."

The first exhibition was a success and Leventhal was keen to make the event a regular one. Partnering with Clive Bingley, a publisher of textbooks on librarianship, the pair delivered the second exhibition in November 1972. The Bloomsbury Centre Hotel played host to the renamed "Small and Specialist Publishers Exhibition."

The scope and influence of the event grew and began to encompass bigger and more general publishers. "In 1975, the initials LBF made their first appearance when the fair was renamed SPEX'75: The London Book Fair. By 1977 SPEX had been dropped and the title London Book Fair was born."

Until 2006 the London Book Fair had been held at the Olympia exhibition centre, but it moved to the ExCeL Exhibition Centre in London's Docklands that year. Due to generally unfavourable feedback from attendees over the new location, such as the inconvenience of transport links or the infrastructure of the location, as well as the intervention resulting from other exhibitions and their wandering visitors, the book fair returned to west London in 2007 and took place at Earls Court Exhibition Centre from 16 to 18 April. Every year, since 2007, The London Book Fair has been held at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre. However, since 2015, LBF, one more time, came back and took place in Olympia London on 14–16 April 2015 as part of London Book And Screen Week. After the success of the 43rd edition, in 2016, The London Book Fair will stay in Olympia with planned dates from 12 to 14 April.

The London Book Fair has grown in size and importance over the years and is now considered as second only to the Frankfurt Book Fair as "a mecca for European publishers, booksellers, rights agents and media trend-spotters".

...
Wikipedia