At La Vallette people had the chance to browse and buy books, have copies signed, and meet the people who wrote them.
‘I think the festival came about because certainly Writer’s Block, the bookshop, was soon to close and local authors started thinking how we are going to sell our books and go forward without the local support, so this is where the idea for the first Book Fest came from,’ said Raven Dubois.
‘It’s proving to be very popular.’
Ms Dubois was promoting her debut psychological thriller, No. 28.
‘It is quite difficult living on an island where you’re limited for events and the number of people who are going to buy your book, whereas within the UK you would probably travel around to different towns where you’re going to have lots of opportunities. As a self-published author, if you look at online sources, like Amazon, you’re drowning in books,’ she said.
Steve Foote from local publisher Blue Ormer was also at the event and said it was great to see a ‘brilliant’ turnout.
‘It’s lovely to meet so many readers and potential readers. It’s the first time we’ve done this, so we didn’t know how well it was going to go down, but it’s been a really great turnout,’ he said.
‘It’s been great, lots of people are interested in the books, and it’s not just the sales that we do these things for, but it’s meeting people, talking about other potential books and ideas that people have got and meeting all the other local writers. I think there’s this growing community around writing here, which is fantastic.’
Mr Foote said publishing books in Guernsey was unique because of the breadth of topics local writers can take inspiration from.
‘The thing about Guernsey is that because of its unique history, there’s so many different aspects of things which people are genuinely interested in, not just about the history, but about the islands. It captures people’s imagination, it generates interesting books, far more so than I think you would in a similar-sized town in the UK,’ he said.
Jill Bray, Tom Gaisford, NK Harrison, Margaret Jones, Nick Le Huray, Rachel Le Mesurier, Martin Morgan of Extraordinary Editions, Jenny O’Brien, Tracey Thomson and RJ Verity were among the other writers and publishers involved in the event.
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