At Earl's Court - I went on the advice of a publisher who said I'd get loads of offers from foreign publishers for their territories for 65 My Life So Far - had a delightful morning chatting to friendly executives (and signing dozens of photos). But attendance is massively down - most foreign companies were ashed out and there are dozens of empty stands.

Still well worth attending and got very positive responses to the book.

Good move sir. Don't give up...I hope you offered them some advice on promoting the book fair to get more punters in.

I've never seen such determination to pursue a self-fulfilling prophesy. Publishers and agents just seem utterly fatalistic at present. Some of the big publishers are deliberately letting really popular titles slip out of print so they can use them for their new 'print on demand' schemes, and even though readers have snubbed the shallow flavour-of-the-month celeb 'memoir' they're still doing little but seek to sign up more of the same. It's like watching turkeys baste themselves in expectation of a visit from Mr Matthews.

Extraordinary today; two hours spent there - very enjoyable for me; dozens of autographs and one man chased after me to tell me he and his friends spent hours discussing me last night and couldn't agree whether or not I was Typically Tropical (sadly not - Barbados!).

But it was only 10% occupied - nobody at all from abroad and, as a result, most UK executives didn't turn up either.

I gave out hundreds of flyers - all hungrily pounced upon. Expect a massive increase in visits to the website.

www.65MyLifeSoFar.com

Like BR, to some degree, I have quit this forum. However, JK. Have you thought about selling your book (and CD box sets actually) on Amazon Marketplace? Your CD Box Sets cost a lot more on Amazon than on here so you could stand to make a lot more money just by undercutting Amazons price by £1.25 (p&P rate for Marketplace plus 1 pence). Listing is free and if you or someone is sending out your stuff anyway it really would not make any difference. An insider point of view suggests that Amazon MArketplace customers often do not buy directly from Amazon, either way you'd be selling your stuff directly to fans and have a unique link to them through sales correspondence. It is a free service until something sells and then Amazon don't take that much. Just a thought. People trust Amazon's payment systems whereas they may be dubious buying elsewhere (Amazon take care of all payments).

Yes Barn; we do also go through Marketplace. And, indeed, we're on Kindle E-Books and shifting quite a few - so many that we've been asked to go on Sony Reader too.