Recession at the London Book Fair

Clues to how the publishing industry is reacting to the recession at the London Book Fair:

Samson said he was seeing a lot of economics, a lot of history, coming across his desk; international rights to new works by historians Max Hastings, Norman Stone and Simon Schama – who is writing a history of the Jewish people - are all on sale at the fair. "The zeitgeist I think is people trying to come to terms with the post-Lehman Brothers world," Samson said. "A lot of history is coming in – people are anxious about the present. And since the collapse of the banks people are very suspicious of false expertise – there is a sense of back-to-basics in the submissions we're getting." He's not, he said, "getting a lot of silly books full of advice. People are writing about the lessons of the past rather than pontificating about the present. The fluffy dating manuals are thin on the ground. People are being quite serious."

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