State of Independents

opinions free from chains

Our trip to the London Book Fair

The LBF is huge and mostly about selling rights – UK and foreign – in books; agents are there to talk to overseas publishers, publishers want to talk to the big buyers in the UK such as book clubs and the like and so on…
However, an increasing number of seminars are being run such as [...]

Me Me Myerson

Since Borders went into administration there has been a flurry of newspaper articles considering the future of bookselling.  These have ranged from talking heads romanticising the Tim Waterstone days at the eponymous chain, to features about boutique-style shops in posh areas of London to trying-to-be-controversial pieces telling us that bookshops and the dead-tree media that [...]

About Us

Welcome to State of Independents. I'm Vanessa Robertson. I live in Edinburgh and my husband and I own a bookshop and tiny publishing house. This is where I write about the book trade as I see it and I'm not always as diplomatic as I should be... We write about what's going on in our businesses over at The Fidra Blog

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