Hello again exhibitors!

It might seem like there's a long time to go until the Summer Oxford Indie Book Fair on 13th July, but the next couple of months are crucial time needed to start promoting the event.

We're planning plenty of advertising and of course we need each one of you to play your own part in getting the message out to your readers and the rest of the public.

There are some new graphics on the Exhibitor Centre for you to download and share with more coming over the next week or so.

As well as the usual methods, we're going to pay special attention to the most important aspect of why we do this -- YOU, the writers and professionals.

Look out for a series of "Meet the Writers" and "Meet the Professionals" graphics for social media featuring a selection of profile photos from the directory page. Of course if you want to be in with a chance to be featured, you need to make sure that you've filled in your profile and emailed in a photo.

Following on from that will be an ongoing series of blogs sent to our mailing list of several hundred subscribers showcasing the people behind the book fair. Each week, I'd like to publish the thoughts of one of our amazing writers and professionals. So, I'm offering the chance for anyone to send in an short piece about what it means to you to be a writer, or professional in the publishing world.

What I'd like to hear is how your work has affected you, what it brings to your life. Most authors have written from the heart, from life experiences. Situations and people might inspire scenes and characters in your book.

When you're writing, do you have any special rituals or routines? Do you have a special place you like to write -- like Roald Dahl's famous writing hut?

Let's talk about what happens behind the scenes of the books and the people that make them happen, NOT just another "hey, here's my book - please buy it" kind of thing that are ten a penny. Of course, talking about how the book was written IS a more subtle and entertaining promotion of your book or service. Hopefully it'll be more engaging than an advert, and of course we'll end with a cover shot, a link to buy and your table number.

How much to write? Let's keep it to something the readers can get through on their phone during a break... Long enough to be interesting but not so long that they give up and miss the link to your book or service at the end. Be sure to make it lively and interesting -- funny, heart-rending, revealing  -- have fun with it!

For inspiration, here's a couple of entries I've had from some of the authors who write for my own publishing labels.

KIM TEILIO

I read a lot of Marvel comics when I was young. Some DC, but Marvel had more characters holding my attention. Comic books, as well as films and TV shows my parents allowed me to watch despite my early years, had me filling the pages of notebooks with stories of my own. My schoolteachers told me I could become a famous writer when I grew up. Classmates had not read my stories, but they viewed me as the talented writer amongst them.
The years went on and I started sending pitches to Marvel Comics and even 2000AD during my early teenage years. Marvel’s submission department responded with nice letters I wish I had kept, 2000AD with the information writers had to first submit one-and-done tales before they could even be considered for an ongoing series. As I grew a little older, this innocence faded. At the start, I would have gladly written these stories for free. With more of an idea to how the world worked, the dream was now to write for big money.
I still enjoyed writing, but the thought of it funding me through life felt to become increasingly unlikely. For every thousand or more published writers, there must be one that is a household name living solely on their royalties.
My outlook changed as the decades moved on, and now I find myself quite settled with my approach. The ideas don’t come as often as they had during my younger years, and it takes me longer to find a rhythm, but I still enjoy writing once something is underway. The big money idea feels more fantastical than anything I could ever put to the page, but the 9-5 job I’m working pays the rent and the bills. Now, my writing is fed by the romantic notion of it being appreciated. To hopefully write something seen by few but recognised as being great appeals to me more than creating something hugely popular despite it being awful (not that you can only have one or the other). I just feel small numbers but respected is the most likely.
There’s enough fantasy in my life without my living it.

PAUL CAMPBELL

After 18 million written words - a conservative estimate after six decades as a writer – it is hard to pinpoint an aspiration, a guiding philosophy, for what I do. In effect I am a professional historian, my discipline simply recording events witnessed since choosing journalism as a career in 1963 and progressing through newspapers, wire services, radio, television and magazines in a dozen countries.
Politics, conflicts, triumph and tragedy, the human story has coloured my personal canvas and these events by necessity have been the ingredients of my literary casserole.
While I am the author of 15 books, these are predominately historical records of people, families, and environments as well as the building blocks of the New Zealand saga.
Thus, my debut novel of 2015, City of Storms, written from my modern-day refuge from the wider world, my home overlooking that blue waters of the Southern Hemishere's largest water haven, the Kaipara Harbour, relies heavily on professional experience in the Philippines and the Far East, wild imagination filling in the gaps between historical fact.
My new autobiographic offering, Hot Metal, Cold Beer- Farewell the Fourth Estate, speaks to those years of great adventure even as I pen a second instalment of memoir tracing a lifetime battle with poliomyelitis
I have been fortunate in a life choice which opened up myriad adventures and travel, plus human experience, against a kaleidoscope of news events. Writing about these has become second nature. I always maintained that my continuing journalism for various media outlets got in the way of other writing. Does a house painter come home to paint his own home?
But writing City of Storms and Hot Metal, Cold Beer has shown me another way to represent in words the impact on me of so many years’ involvement in framing the first draft of history.
Paul Campbell, Kaipara Harbour, New Zealand

Your turn...

Send your submissions to this email address. We can't guarantee that we'll publish them all and might need to make some edits. It would also help to put a reminder at the end of the title of the book and the Amazon link. We use affiliate links whenever we link to Amazon, and that brings a few pennies this way to help grease the wheels.

Oh, and if you can't get enough of book fairs, why not drop in to the HeadLitfest on Saturday 10-May from 10am to 3pm at the Headington Quarry Village Hall - I'll be there!

Looking forward to hearing more stories behind the stories,

Andy - and as always Sylvia, James, Shona, Ray and Felicity