Where's the American Coverage of the LBF?

The London Book Fair has always been one of my favorite conventions. London by itself is always fantastic—although way too expensive these days (thank you depressed American economy for making my dollars completely worthless)—and the fair is a more calm, friendly version of Frankfurt. (And, on a personal sidenote, the best thing I ever wrote—in my opinion—was a LBF report for the Words Without Borders blog a few years back. It helped that my fucking hotel room flooded, giving me lots of frustrating bureaucratic encounters to rank about . . .)

This year I’m skipping in favor of an Editors Week in Buenos Aires that starts on Saturday. (Two continents in two weeks was a bit too much for me.) What’s weird is the startling lack of coverage by American media outlets and bloggers about this year’s fair.

PW is doing their thing, but aside from that, the best coverage is overseas. (Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind has a good roundup of the little coverage that’s out there, and points to both Publishing News and The Bookseller for decent updates.) I know Bookslut is there covering the fair, but I can’t find any pieces by her yet.

Seems like the kind of thing GalleyCat used to cover until they co-opted Gawker’s tone, writers, and interest in book covers. (Still a very interesting blog—although I do take issue with the Unboring Book Blogs and the inclusion of the hardly bookish Fimoculous whose last post about books was from frickin’ April 7th! And here I thought I was being lazy!)

All this is to say that this situation kind of sucks. I know some of the LBF is insider baseball with the deals and digital announcements and whatnot, but there are events that would be interesting to the general public. In fact, come to think of it, I haven’t seen much about the Free the Word! festival either. I thought I could live vicariously and hear about the swanky parties I’m missing. The great book international books that are being shopped unsuccessfully or otherwise.

Hopefully I’m missing a treasure trove of LBF info . . . If so, please let me know where it is.

I hope I’m