London Book Fair 2013

April 15-17,  Earls Court, London

This year’s London Book Fair begins today and explores the theme, Making Words Go Further. However, the Digital  Minds Conference that kicked off the Book Fair was held  yesterday and featured Best Selling author, Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is a novelist and screenwriter of  fantasy, horror, science fiction, and dark fantasy. His most notable works are The Graveyard Book, American Gods, Neverwhere, Stardust, and Coraline to name a few. Early in 2001, after finishing American Gods, Neil set out blogging about the every day chores of writing, revising, publishing, and eventually promoting the book. His blogging evolved into a routine of updates and tweets to fans and potential fans, and overall thoughts on being a novelist. He is one of many authors who are directly active with fans and answers questions through email. Why blog? Well, according to Neil, “because writing is, like death, a lonely business.” And blogging is, perhaps the quickest, most efficient way to connect with readers.

This gives Neil, an early pioneer of social media, a unique perspective on the new territory known as the Digital Frontier. As Keynote Speaker at the Digital Minds Conference, Neil’s personal theme was “try everything” which I found inspiring and liberating and quite exciting. As an author whose debut novel will be published as an e-book original by Random House, I feel as though I am hitched to the wagons and set to explore this new frontier. It’s a bit scary but then, most new things are. I encourage new writers to read his full interview at www.publishersweekly.com and to keep up on the ever changing publishing world. What you don’t know can hurt you and what you learn can help you understand the changes in e-contracts and the power of social media as your greatest promotional tool.