This week I went to the London Book Fair, so see old friends, network and see what is happening in the market. Despite a big digital publishing section it was clear that publishers are still committed to producing books made of paper and cardboard, and although fiction may be more convenient to read on an e reader, it will never replace the tactile feel of handling and reading an illustrated book, of which there were thousands on display.  

I can see the attraction of ebooks, particularly as I travel so much; my pack has always been excessively heavy because of all the books I lug around. I always feel uneasy when I don’t have anything to read, I regard a reserve of 600 unread pages as the bare minimum. So to save all that weight I can see myself buying an ebook reader in the future.

Arthur C. Clark the science fiction writer, always foretold a long future for the book. They are cheap to product, look attractive, can be lent and resold, don’t need a power source to be used, and can suffer a lot of damage and still be read. Drop your e reader in the bath or even just let the battery run down and you’ll be reduced to staring out of the bus window. Besides, books do furnish a room, they are the perfect present. No one will ever cherish an ebook, or look at it fondly on the bookshelf. The fact that in Britain we have a buoyant second hand market for books shows that people are still prepared to track down and buy old favourites.

At a seminar at the Book Fair a publishing executive from the US announced that in America, heavy book buyers were now buying over 50% of their books in digital format. A heavy book buyer is regarded as someone who buys only twelve books a year, itself a pretty depressing statistic.  I see part of the problem as the way books are sold, and the demise of book chains like Borders in the UK is partly because they have followed the American retail model. Books are now regarded as just a commodity, they are sold in the same way as baked beans, pile a few titles high, sell ‘em cheap, regardless of the quality, and make this the same in all your stores. Waterstones are now doing this making a visit to one of their stores a particularly dreary experience these days. This mode of selling is fine for the supermarkets, after all it’s their business model but what the bookshops have forgotten is that book lovers don’t like having books sold to them as if their baked beans and they particularly don’t like the ‘do you want fries with that?’ type selling at the till. There are still good bookshops around, with a wide selection of titles and knowledgeable staff and I know many heavy book buyers who shop in them.

Many in publishing regard the advance of the ebook as unstoppable. I believe that people are buying ebooks not because they are so wonderful or practical but because the experience of buying real books is so uninspiring. Both formats can co exist and both have their advantages, as I’ve pointed out, but the publishing industry needs to stand up for real books. They should be helping to make them a pleasure to buy and own, reading books should be about more than the raw data printed on the pages. The booksellers also need to wake up and start finding out what their customers what and delivering it, instead of using a business model that only makes sense to the pointy heads. Those people don’t buy books.  

On Tuesday 12th April I went to see Wilbur Smith who was ‘in conversation’ at the Royal Geographical Society in London. At these events a famous person is interviewed by a journalist, in this case Mary Rhodes from the BBC, and asked questions about their life and work.

We started off with a few anecdotes about his early life, as a child shooting pigeons while lying in bed, and a witty story about fishing using a stick of gelignite, which blew up the canoe Wilbur was sitting in. We also heard about how he became an accountant, mainly because his father admired his own accountant, so thought it would be a worthwhile career for his son. He ended up working in a tax office in Harare, and wrote his first book ‘ When the Lion feeds’ in work time on government stationary as he didn’t have a great deal to do.

Mary Rhodes asked him about his hunting and if he felt bad about killing a bull elephant. Wilbur pointed out that when he was a child there was such an abundance of animals it was almost as if they could never end. He also described how hunting could help communities in Africa. If an American hunter will pay $125,000 to shoot an old bull, and that half that money goes to the tribe in the area where the elephants live, then the people will look upon them as an asset, and they will be converted from poachers to conservationists. An old bull will have given all he can to the herd by passing on his genes; many of the younger animals will be his offspring. All he can look forward too is a death by slow starvation as his teeth wear down, so what is so wrong with a hunter shooting him, particularly as so many people will benefit from it?

Wilbur has a soft South African accent and he clearly loves Africa. He said he regarded Africa as a treasure house of stories, which was good because he thought people were fascinated by Africa seeing it as a romantic place full of adventure and danger. It also has such varied terrain and landscapes and well as wonderful flora and fauna. Interestedly he didn’t mention the people, about whom he has always written about with such insight and respect. Asked about how he sees the future for Africa, he said ‘Africa is eternal’ and that countries like South Africa will change but they will survive.

Talking about his writing, he said a writer should write for themselves and should write about what they know about, which is why he always wrote about Africa. A writer should be immersed in their environment in order to be able to write about it. For him, the characters were the most important part of the story, and I was lucky enough at the end to ask him which was his favourite character. Sean Courtney he said,, because he was the first, but he was also very fond of Taita, from the Egyptian series.

Wilber’s advice for writers is to start with a deadline, work business hours, have a daily routine and stop before you get tired, which for him is after about four hours. He said that writers become disillusioned as they go back and rewrite the first 100 pages countless times and give up, so he only reads the previous day’s work. He just goes with ‘the winds of the story’. Sometimes he leaves a book, goes away for awhile and then rereads the whole thing again afresh, carrying on from where he left off. What a writer needs he said is tenacity, keep on going with it, don’t ever give up.

A questioner asked Wilbur about his influences, and he said that all writers inspired him, although he had favourites like the Robert Graves ‘Claudius’ books, Hemingway’s ‘Old Man and the Sea’ and John Steinbeck, a writer he thought who had real compassion for human beings in straiten times.

At the end Mary Rhodes asked him about the radio programme ‘Desert Island Disks’ on which he appeared in 1982. She wanted to know if he would take the same book now as then. Then it had been the complete Oxford English Dictionary, the 26 volume set, now he thought, he would take Google. As for his luxury, then it had been a bed and he said he saw no reason to change that, as ‘all good things happen in bed’.

Afterwards, ever the pro, he sat and signed a large pile of his latest book ‘Those in peril’ for fans in the audience.

Its always a great thrill when you meet one of your heroes and today I did just that. The adventure and historical writer Wilbur Smith is in London to promote his new novel ‘Those in peril’ and he was signing books at the Waterstones branch in Leadenhall market, in the heart of the City. Having worked in publishing and arranged signings in the past, which are often not that successful I thought I could just roll up a few minutes before the start and get my book signed but as I turned the corner into the market and I was amazed to see a queue running the whole lenght of the street. Having checked it was the queue for the signing, I was told I had to go into the shop and buy the book first. On the way in I saw the man himself sitting behind a table in the corner of the shop, chatting to the punters at the head of the queue and signing books.

Back outside, and talking to people in the queue around me, I was surprised to find that this was not such a big deal for most of them. A couple had joined the queue, just because it was a queue and had bought the book and were having it signed as future present for a relative. Another was buying it for his wife. I gave them a potted biography of Wilbur Smith, all of which was news to them. The Waterstones staff, two girls who were keeping track of the numbers, had no idea who Wilbur Smith was, had certainly never read anything by him and their only comment was, that the books all looked rather long. Overall is was a smartly dressed crowd, tending to middle age and 90% male.

Finally, I was at the top of the queue. Wilbur shook my hand, I told him I‘d read all his books and thanked him for so many happy hours of reading. ‘We’ve obviously connected’ he replied as he signed my book with a big fountain pen. Connected was a bit of an understatement, I’ve crossed whole swathes of Africa inspired by the characters in his books, but how can you convey this in a few minutes? I’d bought my camera and people standing around who I assumed were minders from the publisher, were happy to take a picture. A young Asian woman who had been sitting next to Wilbur, jumped out of her seat so I could sit down. I later realized that this must have been his wife – Mokhiniso. The guy taking the picture messed up the first shot so took it again. ‘If this was a Lion, you’d have had by now’ quipped Wilbur. Then another firm handshake and I was on my way.

I’ve seen a picture of Wilbur Smith in a bookshop, as a young man, promoting his first book ‘When the Lion feeds’ which must have been around 1965. So here he is all these years later, he knows that getting out there to promote a book is all part of the job, and he’s a hard worker. In an age where even people with no talent can be celebrities, it’s gratifying to see over an hundred people were prepared to stand and wait to meet an author. Booklovers are still out there.

As Wilbur Smith is now in his seventies, you have to wonder how many more books we will see. I had never imagined I would meet him, so to have done so today is something I will look back on with satisfaction for a long time. And now to start the book...