The Bookseller.com

10th October 2008

Joel Rickett is deputy editor of The Bookseller, and also writes columns for the Guardian and Screen International.

Style and substance(s)

16.04.08

A Ladbroke Grove gastropub called the Fat Badger. Entry with a tattoo only. Jamie and Pete on the decks. It could only be Canongate's London Book Fair party, fast becoming a legendary annual rite of passage.

Modelled on Atlantic boss Morgan Entrekin's Frankfurt bash, the Canongate evening begins with a dinner for 60 - international editors, agents, authors and a few booksellers. Invites are so scarce that only a handful of the publisher's own staff are allowed seats. Then the shackles are off, and the blaggers are in, for the 11pm-3am rave. It's crowded, loud, and full of people that look far too sharply kitted out and fresh-faced to have been anyway near Earls Court. It's a strange kind of vicarious fun.

Our agent provocateur and columnist extraordinaire Daisy Frost has the real scoop on the madness. But on a more sober note, it's fascinating how well Canongate creates a kind of feelgood community that lets it effortlessly spread the work about its books.

And Jamie Byng's showmanship, much like Cristiano Ronaldo's tricks, actually serve a purpose. Each of last night's invited authors—including Geoff Dyer and Helen Walsh—have books out in late 2008 or 2009; Byng toasted them in turn, evangelising about their work. They laughed, they cringed, they loved it. Suddenly Hardeep Singh Kohli was hugging Borders' Caroline Mileham and setting up a long lunch in Bray with Amazon's Kes Nielsen.

Byng went on to toast Barack Obama (also, inevitably, a Canongate author) before making a lyrical appeal to the power of books and the fact that everyone working in publishing has to believe in the "Audacity of Hope". Over the top? Yes. Effective? Undoubtedly.