The London Book Fair returns to the Olympia in Kensington one last time March 10–12 before moving to the Docklands-located Excel center in 2027. The move that is likely to generate a great deal of debate among fairgoers, some of whom remember LBF’s unwelcome move to that same venue in 2006. But the impending change of address may be the least complicated shift facing the global publishing industry this spring, as a weakened U.S. dollar, Trump’s unpredictable tariff regime, and unresolved AI copyright disputes reshape the economics of international publishing.
The U.S. dollar has declined approximately 7%–10% against major currencies since Donald Trump’s reelection in November 2024, according to the DXY index. For the international rights market, the math is straightforward: American rights have become cheaper for foreign buyers, which means more may be open to acquiring direct English-language rights, not just for translation, while acquisitions by U.S. publishers (already the world’s largest importers of translation rights) have grown more costly. Add the cost of translation to a weaker dollar, and the commercial calculus for bringing international titles into the American market becomes more complicated.
Printing in China and India has become more expensive for U.S. publishers, as has importing paper from Canada. Meanwhile, the AI companies that trained their models on copyrighted books without permission remain overwhelmingly American, and publishers outside the U.S., having little legal recourse, are resentful.
Fair director Emma Lowe, in her first year running the event, addressed the political climate directly and said LBF wants to signal the importance of the American market to the world. Bob Carrigan, CEO of Audible, will deliver a keynote on Tuesday, March 10—his first outside the U.S. And the fair’s first-ever “narrator of the fair,” Ray Porter, is American. Two U.S. booksellers are also being sponsored to attend the fair. “These were deliberate choices,” Lowe says.
Much of LBF’s programming is anchored by the U.K.’s National Year of Reading, a Department for Education initiative aimed at reversing the decline in leisure reading among young people—an issue that all publishers are confronting. “If we do nothing else this year and somehow find a way to create a great love and a habit of reading, then my job’s done,” Lowe says.
Among the keynotes on the fair’s main stage are sessions featuring Tom Weldon, CEO of Penguin Random House, on Tuesday, discussing the publishing landscape, and Joanna Prior on Wednesday, in her first major industry address since becoming Pan Macmillan CEO. Also on Wednesday, the Authors of the Fair lineup features Alice Oseman, creator of the Heartstopper graphic novel series, as “creative of the fair”; Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø; Sunday Times–bestselling novelist Mike Gayle; and A.F. Steadman, author of the Skandar children’s series.
Unsurprisingly, AI is featured in the program, as is film and TV adaptation. Rebecca Glashow, former BBC executive and now CEO of Tribeca Enterprises, which runs the Tribeca Film Festival, will discuss how screen adaptations help books find new audiences.
The ability to discover new books and markets is a strong incentive to make the trip to London, and in this regard, LBF promises not to disappoint. “We’re showcasing several markets that don’t get a lot of attention, such as independent publishers from across Africa, and the literature of smaller nations like Georgia and Malta,” Lowe says. The Literary Translation Center will host a session on how translators take on the role of agents for less widely translated languages.
As in the past several years, the organizers anticipate approximately 25,000 attendees representing around 2,000 publishers. Among them, Lowe hopes, will be crowds of Americans. “Whatever happens in your country doesn’t mean that we don’t want to do business with you,” she says. “Hold your heads up high and come over, because we can’t wait to see you.”
Read more from our London Book Fair Show Guide feature.
London Book Fair 2026: Rights of Passage
