LBF Signs Earls Court Deal

-- Publishers Weekly, 5/11/2006

Faced with the possible defection of publishers to a new book fair sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair, Reed Exhibitions issued the following release today from Alistair Burtenshaw, group exhibition director for LBF. No word on what, if any, accommodations have been reached with Frankfurt. The dates for the show are the same Frankfurt had chosen for its new fair; there are reports Frankfurt had not signed a contract for those days.

Reed Exhibitions today announced that it has signed a long-term agreement to run The London Book Fair at Earls Court with effect from Monday, April 16th -Wednesday, 18th 2007. This will be the only book fair to run during the Spring at either Earls Court or Olympia.

Commenting on this agreement, Alistair Burtenshaw, The London Book Fair's Group Exhibition Director, said: "it is very clear that our customers want The London Book Fair to be located in the London's West End and our top priority is to deliver what they want. Following Frankfurt's announcement on May 5th to launch their own book fair at Earls Court, we approached Earls Court and were able to negotiate and formalise an immediate deal.

The move to ExCeL was a major industry decision that has clearly not met our customers' needs and we encountered many operational difficulties for which we have unreservedly apologised. The important issue now is to get all aspects of The London Book Fair right in 2007 in a West End location that the publishing industry tells us is very important to their business. We will be working very closely with Earls Court to make this a great fair.

We passionately believe that the publishing industry needs a strong, London based, independent and global trade show that offers a top class opportunity to do international business and we will continue to focus on delivering great results for all our clients - as we have aimed to do for the last 20 years.

When selecting locations for our trade exhibitions we always aim to make the choice based on the needs of the market. ExCeL is a modern facility and we will continue to run many of our other world class exhibitions there.

We will be announcing specific details of The London Book Fair's move to Earls Court in the next few days. We hope this announcement will now eliminate the confusion and concerns that have existed since Frankfurt's announcement last week. It will also enable the industry to move forward with one book fair, in the right location and with a management team that has 20 years experience of running effective book fairs in the UK but who have learnt a valuable lesson in the last 12 months.

From now on, to ensure that we are completely in tune with industry needs and thinking, we will shortly be announcing the formation of an independent Advisory Board of senior industry figures who will counsel us on the future development of The London Book Fair."