[SKRIVA] Söderhamn Book Fair
- From: Ahrvid Engholm <ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <skriva@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2012 15:26:31 +0200
It was the third time for the book fair called Norrland's Longest Book Table,
last weekend. (Norrland is the name of the northern half of Sweden.) You gather
ca 30 writers to the central library of the Norrland city of Söderhamn, where
they can sell and promote their books on book tables and also hold
mini-lectures in the library itself. Plus mingle with fellow writers.
It was my second invitation to this book fair. The first time i lectured on
sf, mysteries and short stories - my collection Murder on the Moon was just out
then. This time I talked about E-book publishing - an E-collection of short
stories I've edited (with Cecilia Wennerström) has just come out, Leap Day and
Other Terrible Things,http://www.adlibris.com/se/product.aspx?isbn?86081454
Organisers are the local writers group (Skrivare i Hälsingland) and they
provide hotel, a dinner with entertainment and your book table, but not
transport. No problem if you have friends with a car. I came there with a
fascinating woman by the name Irene Canel, who entertained me on the road with
numerous anecdotes from her varied life. She's just published her memoires,
born in a German family in a part of Poland, fleeing in the end of WWII, later
emigrating to Uruguay, starting a ballet academy, emigrating to Sweden,
starting a successful philately firm. And much more. A very nice lady.
The Friday of the book fair was very fine and sunny and with many people
turning up - the book tables were outside the library on a pedestrian street.
Unfortunately the Saturday was not so good with contstant rain and a chill you
wouldn't belive from early June. The book tables moved into the library, but of
course the weather cut the number of public turning up. (In fact, papers said
this was the coldest early June for 84 years... Stockholm Marathon was on at
the same time and it was +4 C. In southern Småland it was even snowing!)
Perhaps you don't sell so many books (apart from my Moon murder collection I
have also http://www.sfbok.se/asp/artikel.asp?VolumeID7796 - plus a soundbook
and the E-anthology pubbed this spring, available through the library) but I
see it as an opportunity to make yourself visible and making contacts. And
visibility was more than OK. The local paper Söderhamns-Kuriren was there and I
was in both a photo and quoted in the rather long report, from my lecture on
E-books. Unfortunately, they spelled my name wrong... (The piece is behind a
paywall, but it was June 2, title "A Long Book Table".)
There were lots of lectures during both days. They have the idea of giving
each author 15 minutes (it somewhat resembles the famous TED Talks) and I had
two of them, both about E-books. Lecture one had problems with my prepared
Powerpoint slides, and because of that I in lecture two made a small summary of
what might have been missed in lecture one - and I thus ran into a shortage of
time. However, I think it went reasonably well despite this, and I have through
pratical connections with the E-book world obtained some knowledge. (I was
invited to speak on E-books for a Rotary club afterwards.)
Other lectures I want to point out are eg the speeches made by crime writer
Ulf Durling and Bertil Falk, both members of our writing society Short Story
Masters (Novellmästarna), which had five members on this book fair. Bertil has
for a few years worked on what is probably the FIRST Swedish sf history, ie
covering only Swedish skiffy. He's been sitting on the Lund University Library
for months researching (I've read parts of the work in progress) and he talked
about some lesser known works of Swedish sf from the 1700s up to our days, incl
slides of authors, book covers etc. Very interesting.
Ulf Durling has a very fascinating style of holding a speech. He has a
general idea of the topic and then seem to go into a sort of trance to spit out
the right words which are often very well phrased and entertaining. He's not
satisfied with today's mysteries, which are too long and too bloody and often
not well written. He sits in mystery award committees and has to read
everything. In his first speech he also covered his connection to Hälsingland
(the province) where he has placed some of his stories. The second speech
covered eg the book The Bandy P
--
ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx / Be an @SFJournalen Twitter Follower for all the latest
news in short form! / Gå med i SKRIVA - för författande, sf, fantasy, kultur
(skriva-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, subj: subscribe) / Om Ahrvids novellsamling Mord
på månen: http://www.zenzat.se/zzfaktasi.html C Fuglesang: "stor
förnöjelse...jättebra historier i mycket sannolik framtidsmiljö"! Nu som
ljudbok: http://elib.se/ebook_detail.asp?id_type=ISBN&id?86081462 / Läs även AE
i nya Vildsint Skymningslandet, årets mest spännande antologi - finns bl a på
SF-Bokhandeln! / YXSKAFTBUD, GE VÅR WCZONMÖ IQ-HJÄLP! (DN NoN 00.02.07)
-----
SKRIVA - sf, fantasy och skräck * Äldsta svenska skrivarlistan
grundad 1997 * Info http://www.skriva.bravewriting.com eller skriva-
request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx för listkommandon (ex subject: subscribe).
Other related posts:
