BookExpo America (BEA) officials said this morning that verified attendance at this year’s show was 21,919 people. Exhibitors comprised just over 8,000 people, with all other “industry professionals” comprising 13,872 people in all. For the first time, the show is tabulating all people who actually attend the show. In the past BEA has provided a breakout of registrants for their “book buyer” category (which includes librarians), but now spokesman Roger Bilheimer says “we have decided that while the book buyer number is a standard of measurement that is important, it is not the only standard of measurement. In that sense, […]
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More On that Quickly Restored Third Day of BEA
BEA’s hasty announcement yesterday morning that next year’s show will restore a third day of floor exhibits caught most people by surprise so it took us a little while to do more than pass along the basic news. When show director Steve Rosato wrote “while many people liked BEA as a two-day show, more people need BEA to be a three-day show,” here’s what he apparently meant. While anecdotally most US publishers were happy with a jam-packed two days of exhibits without the “tumbleweeds” as one executive put it of the third day, it’s the international exhibitors who were close […]
Faber's Page on Publishers' Priorities in the Digital Age, And Corollaries from BEA
In concert with iPad launch, Faber and Faber ceo Stephen Page has an essay in the Guardian on what it means for publishers: “It’s clear that publishers must move faster to establish our compelling and useful role in the modern life of reading. While acquiring new expertise, we must assert the best of our traditional strengths; providing capital (in the form of advance payments), offering editorial expertise, and creating a readership by designing, creating, storing, promoting and selling the works of writers. But that’s not enough. Publishers also have to explain what value they are bringing to the relationship between […]
Back to the Future: BEA Adds Back Third Day
You have to love the book business in all its idiosyncrasy. For years exhibitors complained about the third day of the show, and we have archived pictures of last year’s vast, empty aisles on Sunday. But nothing makes you miss something like taking it away. Writing that “while people like the two-day format, a lot of people genuinely need three days to meet their objectives at BEA,” show director Steve Rosato said they will add back a third day of exhibits next year. They will retain the mid-week schedule, and are likely to still have the conference day precede the […]
Stewart Kills at Breakfast
Jon Stewart, whose new book Earth comes out from Grand Central in September, told the Adult Book Breakfast audience at BEA that when he read in the New York Times that the book industry was dead, he thought, “Oh, good, I don’t have to get up early tomorrow.” Stewart kept the crowd laughing as he introduced fellow authors John Grisham, Condoleezza Rice, and Mary Roach. Welcoming Rice to the podium, he said, “I’m not familiar with her work, but I hear good things.” Rice promised the audience that she would write the book of her eight years in the White […]
Still More Buzz: The Last Batch of PL Reviews
Not wanting to be limited to the “official” buzz books, we also commissioned early reviews from one more curated selection of books featured at the show. Can Jonathan Franzen meet the tremendous expectations with FREEDOM? Veteran reviewer David Kipen says yes, and Nicole Krauss’s anticipated new book also sounds like one that will resonate with her fans. Freedomby Jonathan Franzen“This novel from the author of The Corrections invites sincere comparisons to Richard Yates, St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tolstoy. “Of course, Franzen has something priceless going for him that Tolstoy never had: Page for page, line by line, […]