Posted on March 4, 2020 at 3:30 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Concern about the COVID-19 outbreak has reached the literary world.
The organizers of the London Book Fair have announced that they’ll cancel the event, which had been set for March 10-12.
Though this fair may be one of the largest canceled literary events so far, but it’s not the first: Salon du Livre in Paris and the Leipzig (Germany) Book Fair had already been put on hold.
As the confirmed cases of COVID-19 began piling up, publishers and agencies had already begun to bow out of London.
The Guardian notes that Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Amazon, and the Curtis Brown literary agency were among the big-name entities saying they’d stay home.
As late as yesterday, organizers had insisted the show would go on, while providing safety protocols against COVID-19, so while the cancellation didn’t surprise many, it did rankle a few for coming as close as it did to the kickoff.
Categories: Today in Books