Jamie Smart, First Ever “Creative Of The Fair” For London Book Fair

Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: Jamie Smart, london book fair

Jamie Smart has been named as the first ever “Creative Of The Fair” for the London Book Fair, being held in March.

Comics artist and British Book Awards winner Jamie Smart has been confirmed as the first-ever Creative of the Fair for London Book Fair in March, where he will host an interactive draw-along where guests will be able to recreate his characters. It’s not hard to tell why, according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market charts, Jamie Smart is the ninth biggest-selling author in Britain of 2024 so far, courtesy of his Bunny Vs Monkey graphic novels. This only counts books sold in bookstores, not his contributions to the Phoenix Weekly Comic from which the bestselling Bunny Vs Monkey graphic novels were derived. Jamie Smart saw 355.412 sales of his graphic novels from January to July 2024, with sales of £2.7 million, making him the biggest-selling British comic book creator, and way ahead of his only real challenger, Alice Oseman. Last year, he also won Best Illustrated Children’s Book and Best Illustrator at the British Book Awards.

The London Book Fair is held every year in March or April this year from the 11th to the 13th of March at the Olympia Exhibition Centre, with a one-day Writers’ Summit on the 10th at Novotel West London. It is principally a global marketplace for rights negotiation, from different territories to different media. Initially formed in 1971 as The Specialist Publishers’ Exhibition for Librarians, with 22 exhibitors, the event and purpose grew rapidly and was renamed the London Book Fair or LBF in 1975, and the librarian focus was dropped. Held at the Olympia Exhibition Centre until 2006, it moved to the London ExCel, switching to the Earls Court Exhibition Centre until 2015, when it returned to Olympia.

Other confirmed speakers include best-selling novelist and chair of judges for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024 Monica Ali, Argentine novelist and screenwriter Claudia Piñeiro, and the current Waterstones Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce as Authors of the Day. Additional speakers include acclaimed authors Elif Shafak, Adele Parks, Bobby Palmer, Beth O’Leary, Maggie Aderin-Pocock, William Hussey, Gill Lewis and Georgina Moore, as well as key industry experts such as Rose Sandy, Founder of the HarperCollins Author and Design Academy and Lucy Pearse, Fiction Editorial Director at Simon & Schuster Children’s Books, and many more.

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