The final day of the London Book Fair wrapped up programming with the remaining attendees hitting the floor after cocktail receptions, group dinners, and for a few, a couple of hours of dancing at the Canongate party—a much-coveted invitation. There, a coterie of publishers, agents, and authors danced into the night with the Scottish publisher Jamie Byng spinning old-school hip-hop for a crowd that included a who's who of publishing from authors like Geoff Dyer to literary agents including WME's Eric Simonoff, Raya's Yasmina Jrassati, and 2 Seas' Marleen Seegers, as well as publishers like Greywolf's Ethan Nosowsky and Cassiano Elek Machado from Record in Brazil.

Among the day's events was a presentation by Julie Finch, CEO of Hay Festival Global, who used her keynote address to argue that the greatest threat to literature is not technology but "narrowness"—of imagination, opportunity, and the range of voices that reach readers.

Publishing, Finch said, faces mounting pressure from rising costs, post-pandemic sales leveling off, and an attention economy in which books compete with streaming, gaming, and short-form video. She warned that algorithms and market economics tend to reward familiarity, pushing the industry toward a "cultural mono-culture" that diminishes literature's power to expand how people see the world.

Finch cast book festivals as a necessary counterweight to that narrowing, describing them as "the public square" of publishing where readers and writers meet outside the influence of algorithms. "A book without a reader is only half alive," she said, framing festival audiences as co-creators of literary culture rather than passive consumers. She called on publishers, agents, booksellers, and festival organizers to collectively protect "the ecosystems that allow ideas to circulate freely and widely" and to defend bibliodiversity and freedom of expression, values she linked directly to the health of a democratic society.

A seat at the table

One key component of the London Book Fair is to raise the profile of underserved communities. In a panel titled "Lifelines or Pipelines? Creating International Publishing Structures that Shift Power and Resources," Untold Narratives, a development program working with marginalized writers, shined a light on how marshal institutional support for deserving authors.

The session, held in partnership with the British Council and the British Library, marked the launch of a long-term initiative supporting writers across Sudan and South Sudan, and was chaired by Sudanese writer and broadcaster Yassmin Abdul-Magied. Panelists included Bibi Bukare-Yusuf, publishing director and co-founder of Cassava Republic Press; Alma Salem, director of Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy; and Hazem Jamjoum, lead editor at Safarjal Press.

The panel built on an Untold Narratives roundtable hosted last summer that brought together organizations working with writers at risk, those experiencing censorship or prejudice, and writers working in minority languages. Bukare-Yusuf framed the core issue plainly: the difference between writers considered local and those with global reach comes down to infrastructure—translation, distribution networks, editorial care, and institutional power.

Untold Narratives founder Lucy Hannah has argued that labels like "local," "emerging," and "underrepresented" encode hierarchies shaped by history, geography, and power, and that the industry needs more rigorous, solutions-focused collaboration to build a publishing ecosystem that is genuinely equitable and self-sustaining.

Next gen

Several panels at this year's fair also focused on how publishers aim to address the decline in reading among young people and what that implies for the future of the industry.

Regina Brooks, president of New York's Serendipity Literary Agency and an LBF Advisory Board member, said one of the highlights of her visit was participating in an "in conversation" event and mixer organized for young publishing professionals. The program is a partnership between the London Book Fair, the Frankfurt Book Fair, and PEN International, launched last October in Frankfurt with the goal of developing the industry's next generation.

"Networking is everything here," Brooks said. She noted that the initiative to attract young professionals resonated with a theme she heard repeatedly at the fair: the urgent need to develop new readers. "There's been a clarion call to make sure that we develop more readers if we want the industry to survive," she said. "It is our best hope."

The future may also lie in how the industry educates and empowers the next generation to take over. Pace University, New York University, and Oxford Brookes University all sponsored students to attend the fair to serve as volunteers, and several of them, in speaking with PW, said the experience reconfirmed their commitment to publishing.

Misha Puello and Sarina Lapore, both Pace University students interning in New York, said they were struck by the sheer scope of the fair, from the intensity of the rights center to the breadth of publishing sectors represented under one roof. Lapore, who is interning in children's production at Simon & Schuster, said she was surprised by how many distinct areas of the business were present.

For Yanni Carneiro, an Oxford Brookes master's student from Brazil studying publishing with a focus on international rights, the fair delivered a more concrete reward. After visiting the Brazilian stand and falling into conversation with the international affairs director of the Brazilian Publishers Chamber about market trends, she walked away with an invitation to work with the delegation at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in April.

"It was at that moment I realized I'd entered not just a profession, but a community," she said, adding, "See you in Bologna."