London Book Fair 2026: What I learned as a First-Time Exhibitor
Wow. Just wow. I could probably stop here and call it my shortest blog post ever, but I won’t.
London Book Fair has been a sticky note on my office wall for the last six months, a goal to aim for and the biggest event of my first year trading as an editorial consultancy – and it didn’t disappoint!
When I booked my place as an exhibitor, I knew that I would have to maximise all the opportunities the LBF could give me. After all, I’m technically still quite a small business in a very big industry (though more on that later!). I planned on attending the three days, handing out leaflets and having chats with anyone who stopped by, but I could never have imagined the doors that are opening up for me now.
Here’s what I took away from LBF26!
Clients: I spoke to so many potential clients last week, each of whom are working on fantastic manuscripts with incredible USPs. Honestly, I’m not even sucking up to them here – I genuinely wanted to work on every single one. From occult fantasy to LitRPG, and from Indian mythological fantasy to South American tales, I was absolutely hooked on every single one, and I truly hope that they get in touch. I also had a wonderful and inspiring chat with an author who doesn’t write fantasy, but who I clicked with so well that we’re due to have a talk soon about a separate editing job on a mutual topic.
Networking: this one was the biggie for me. I didn’t just meet authors and writers but also agents, publishers, YouTube creatives, Masters students in publishing, other small business owners, colleagues from NielsenIQ, a wonderful small publisher of queer fiction called Bona Books (look them up!), journalists and academics, app creators and tech companies, speakers and magazine sellers. All of these have motivated me even more than before, if that’s possible, and I’ve been following up with some great conversations this week, setting meetings and forming what I hope to be long-term partnerships.
Learning: I don’t think I could summarise everything I learned last week except to say that I hope I can do it again next year. The services I offer, the fact that this is a fantasy fiction editorial consultancy, all landed incredibly well with everyone I spoke to, and I hope that the value I know we as a consultancy can bring will only grow in ambition, recognition and partnerships going forward.
Personal Pride: it would be remiss of me to not add what I took from LBF personally, as a writer and editor, as a small business owner, and as someone who struggles on a daily basis with ME/CFS. It wasn’t easy to attend and my health did take quite a knock over the last five days. I spent most evenings that week in my hotel room, tucked up in bed and doing my best to rest despite nausea, fatigue, body aches and chills. I’m so lucky that my fiancé took a whole week off work to come and support me: he drove me down to London, carried the heavy suitcase of leaflets and stall prep to the venue, found me food and drink, encouraged me to rest when I needed to, and even manned the stall so I could take a break or network elsewhere around the fair. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him, or our golden retriever (Rufus, aka my editorial assistant), and I am forever grateful to him for helping me achieve my goal of LBF26.
I purposefully decided to keep this blog post short – not just because I could go on and on for pages about LBF and the opportunities that came out of it, but because I still haven’t quite recovered energy-wise and I want to save all I can for the two clients I’m working with this month.
If you attended LBF and spoke to me, thank you so much for stopping by my stall and I hope to see you again in the future!
Heather x