BEA show director Lance Fensterman expands in a blog post on the projected statistics for the upcoming convention that we wrote about earlier. Exhibition square footage is running 20 to 25% smaller than the last show in LA. In attendance, ABA registrations are “almost flat (100 or so down)”; librarians are down “about 25%, which is disappointing”. Miscellaneous industry professionals who did not fit into new, more target categories have been slimmed by about 1,350, which was intentional, to eliminate “attendees that our exhibiting customers told us were not of high value to them.” Overall registered attendees are down by 30 percent compared to the last time the show was in New York, and exhibitor registration, “a category which I think needed some shrinking,” is down by 35 percent.
Fensterman concludes: “What does all this mean in the simplest of terms? For BookExpo in NYC we are going to see an appropriately smaller exhibit floor with less ‘low quality’ attendees, less exhibiting personnel and roughly the same number of retailers, ABA booksellers, national booksellers, and authors…. BEA needs to be a high level book industry event where publishers can connect with key influencers. We need to make this connection easier, not harder, and I genuinely think we may be on the road to doing just that.”
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In other BEA-related news, Atria Books is inviting booksellers and media to visit their GalleyGrab.com site to request up to three of 16 galleys on offer, which they will ship to you.
GalleyGrab