Here’s a suggestion to get you started, Adam. Pop along to an industry fair as a visitor – any industry will do – and try sitting on the floor for three days running.

The decision by RX to shunt this year’s London Book Fair director, Gareth Rapley, to another station at the company, is a welcome one.

One could forgive Rapley’s mistakes with LBF23, being his first time in the position.

But to see the same mistakes repeated in 2024 was galling. Rapley apparently has an enviable reputation for organising industry shows, but publishing proved a book too far.

By visitor numbers, LBF24 did reasonable well, although it’s hard to work out how RX magicked an extra 3,000 on top of the original 30,000 it claimed attended this year.

A shame RX could not conjure up some extra seating when needed.

Sadly, Rapley’s LBF legacy will always be remembered as the director who expected trade visitors to sit on the floor.

The new kid on the block, Adam Ridgway, previously commercial director at RX, and with lots of experience across lots of industry (none of which were publishing), has big boots to fill.

No, not Rapley’s, nor the one-year wonder Andy Ventris. I means Jacks Thomas, who brought stability, elegance and publishing industry experience to the LBF for seven long years pre-pandemic.

Too soon to judge Ridgway one way or another, although it’s a perhaps ominous sign that Porter Anderson, over at Publishing Perspectives, describes Ridgway as “affable“, a quality previously attributed to Andy Ventris, who RX quickly moved on.

Although that’s the least of Ridgway’s worries.

On behalf of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, led by Juergen Boos since forever (or 2005, which is much the same thing), Anderson reminds us that “it’s generally agreed among many in the business that a director who is in place for some time has a chance to learn her or his market and to build trust with industry leadership. One- and two-year stints can be assumed not to provide much opportunity for such relationship development.”

Ouch!

And it seems like only February the Buchmesse’s official journal was having a go at its other main European rival, Bologna.

“ Layers of branding become confusing, not clarifying, and the tone of many programs will always get shrill,” Anderson lamented.

But on this occasion – LBF – Anderson has a bloody good point.

No matter how good Ridgway may be at his job, he’s not a publishing industry person, and given Gareth Rapley learned nothing over two years, Ridgway would do well to spend the next two months not having Rapley sharing his inexperience and end up leading Ridgway down the wrong path.

But penultimately, it’s RX that needs to get its act together. LBF is an annual event that – except when Rapley was panic-changing dates as he ran scared of the burgeoning Bologna event – is as regular as clockwork, and back in the Jacks Thomas days as reliable as clockwork too.

Yet RX seems incapable of finding someone who can get it right. Even Publishers Weekly‘s Edward Nawotka, who like Pollyanna can always find something positive to accentuate, said Rapley’s two LBF events could only be “considered relative successes.”

Which brings us to the ultimately bit. the UK publishing industry needs to run the London Book Fair for the UK industry. Germany, Italy, France and lately the USA all manage this.

But until that fateful day, RX will run the show as it sees fit, and for 2025 at least, Adam Ridgway has been handed the poisoned chalice.

I’m guessing Ridgway was not at Bologna this year, having no reason to have been there, but I do hope he will be at the PW Book Show in May, at Frankfurt in October, and a fixture at as many other trade and public-facing book fairs as possible before making any final decisions on how LBF25 should be run.

Ridgway brings to the table experience in energy, jewellery, chemicals, and broadcasting, so at least can come to LBF with an open mind, even if his hands are tied.

As an employee of, and former commercial director of, RX, Ridgway is of course going to put the interests of RX above all else. That’s a given.

But as Jacks Thomas showed us, that needn’t put LBF at a disadvantage. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Ridgway needs to engage with the industry and not just ask questions about the industry’s needs and what the industry expects from a fair, but take notice and act on what he hears, something Gareth Rapley failed to do.

So here’s a suggestion to get you started, Adam. Pop along to an industry fair as a visitor – any industry will do – and try sitting on the floor for three days running.