Day in the Life (London Book Fair): Anna Goldberg
Editorial Administrative Assistant, HarperCollins.
Day: Wednesday, March 12th, 2025
6:30 AM: Rise and shine, London time! Time to get ready for the day and take advantage of the complimentary hotel breakfast before a day packed with speakers, panels, and volunteer responsibilities.
8:15 AM: As representatives of NYU’s Master’s in Publishing program, three of my classmates and I are accompanied by the Assistant Director of the NYU Center for Publishing, Paul Amodeo, on our 12-minute walk to the Olympia Exhibition Center.
8:45 AM: After receiving our assigned volunteer roles to start the day, my partner and I take advantage of our free time before events to discover the fairgrounds and chat with booksellers. We even ran into one of our professors on her way to negotiate a rights deal!
10:15 – 10:45 AM: Our first session of the day is at the Main stage for Storytelling and World Building from Video Games to Audio Fiction to Novels: In Conversation with Dan Houser. This incredibly dynamic discussion detailed Houser’s experience being a lead writer and creative director for the famous Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto video games and how he has adapted his writing style to be compatible with long-form digital storytelling. These insights were invaluable as Houser has experience writing books, writing for screen, and writing for interactive formats, showing his versatility as an author and his ability to adapt work across mediums.
11:15 – 12:15 PM: Our second session is at the English PEN for Publishing and Environmental Responsibility: Why the Climate Crisis is a Free Expression Issue. This panel addressed concerns about whether or not print publishing is actually sustainable. With enlightening perspectives from Emilie Hames, the sustainability and compliance production manager at PRH UK, and Dr. James Miller, author and founding member of Writers Rebel, attendees were able to ask questions on best practices for being sustainable publishers and booksellers.
12:10 – 12:55 PM: Our third session is at Author HQ for Beyond the Love Story: Sharing the Future of Romance in Publishing. Romance has taken the world by storm since Covid-19 and has dominated book sales in recent years. With the romance genre being all the rage, this panel offers advice on how writers can make their novel stand out, how to keep a finger on the pulse of upcoming trends, and how to deliver unique plot, tropes, and characters to provide something truly original to readers. William Hussey, Beth O’Leary, and Saara El-Arifi talk about their experience being published authors and how to craft a story that feels believable and authentic.
1:00 PM: Time for lunch! My partner and I caught the tube to grab a quick bite nearby to avoid the long lines at the fair food vendors. One Diet Coke later…
3:00 – 3:45 PM: Back to the Main Stage for From Book to Screen: Transforming a Best-Selling Book Into a Hit TV Series. Best-selling author Lucy Clarke discusses her hit novel The Castaways and its TV series adaptation for Paramount+ with the Executive Producer, Mike Benson, and Screenwriter, Ben Harris. Clarke and her team discuss the process and challenges of adapting a novel to the big screen. Attendees walked away with insights as to what makes a book a candidate for adaptation, and how to navigate that transition while staying true to the original work.
4:15 – 5:15 PM: Our fifth and final panel session for the day is in the English PEN for What Do We Do With Contentious Classics? This panel tackled the difficult discussion of what society considers “classics”. Panelists firmly believe that editing and republishing classics containing slurs and outdated language is retroactive censorship and actually counterproductive in terms of teaching young minds in classrooms. It is important to analyze texts as they are and learn from them. The way forward is to create safe spaces to discuss, analyze, and compare classics and their implications.
6:15 – 7:45 PM: Time to hit the bookstores! Off to the famous Hatchards in Piccadilly Circus, and Daunt Books in Marylebone.
8:00 – 10:00 PM: Group dinner for our last night. What an amazing London Book Fair 2025! Cheers!
Check out more from the Early Career Committee on our blog.
