BookExpo America, which recently announced major changes--including a permanent presence in New York City and midweek dates instead of weekends--is making yet more changes. They will be effective with this year's show, to be held in New York at the end of May.
Reached for comment while standing outside the HarperCollins building selling pencils, BEA v-p and show director Lance Fensterman said, "We're looking forward yet again to hosting the preeminent English-language gathering of the book industry in the world. We believe that the changes we are implementing will further establish the show as a must-attend event for everyone who's left in the business."
Among the changes:
BEA is moving out of the Javits Center and will be held at a variety of locations in New York City. Fensterman called the move a "liberating" decision that will make the show "a movable feast. We plan to take advantage of Manhattan, the setting for so many novels, the center of American publishing, the home of Barnes & Noble, a place with such resonance for the book business internationally. Having the show wander, as it were, will allow the industry to have more contact with the people who read what it creates. It will also allow exhibitors to exhibit in venues appropriate to them. For example, some sports books publishers will be at Citi Field in Queens for the Mets series against Florida (and may add revenue by selling peanuts and Cracker Jack). Likewise, gardening and outdoor publishers will cultivate customers in Central Park and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Several publishers with strong cocktail and beverage book lines will be lining the bars on Seventh Avenue."
Fensterman added, "We expect larger publishers to split up the exhibits so that, for example, a big house may highlight some financial titles in a booth on Wall Street while it hawks liberal political memoirs and histories on the Upper West Side. Cutting-edge, hip publishers will be in the East Village and make forays into Williamsburg. Librarians will hold some programming at the main library on Fifth Avenue.
"International publishers will exhibit at the United Nations, while some national collective stands will be hosted in the appropriate consulates. Gay and lesbian publishers are expected to have booths on Christopher Street and in Chelsea. African-American events will be held in Harlem. If it has a board quorum, the American Booksellers Association will hold its annual meeting at its headquarters in Tarrytown. (Because of the economy, the association is canceling plans for the Hotel ABA in Brooklyn. Booksellers who had planned to stay there are invited to overnight at the association's offices.)
Opening BEA events will be held in the Dr. Seuss Room at Random House. Keynote speaker Paul "Glass Is Totally Empty" Krugman will speak to attendees via satellite because his safety cannot be guaranteed. During the show, Fensterman himself will offer hourly comedy routines in Bryant Park. (He promises that his material will "non-book-topical-like.") The closing event on Sunday is a cash-bar get together in the main room of Grand Central Terminal, convenient to publishing executives' last trains out of town to Westchester and Connecticut.
Unofficial events abound. Some publishers will exhibit in their own offices, using various draws to entice trade visitors, including free food and drink and overnight lodgings in conference rooms. Invitations to the two publisher parties planned so far are in high demand, the blog site Publishers Weekly reported. At least one entrepreneur has organized a "Vanished Manhattan Book World" walking tour, whose highlights include visits to sites of defunct bookstores as well as restaurants where editors and agents used to have expense account meals.
Among BEA educational seminars and presentations:
* One Is the Fullest Number. Jane Friedman will discuss her new-concept publishing house, which will launch later this year. To be called One, it will put out one title a year. It will publish one copy of the book, relying on POD and e-book versions for sales. After its first year, it will have a backlist of one title. Friedman will be the only employee and reports happily to herself.
* The New Swindle: A Virtual Handheld Bookstore. Hear about this new Amazon product. Press a button on the device and a virtual bookstore with cats, cappuccino and artificial intelligence booksellers appears all around you. In 30 seconds, a droid will be handselling an e-book, BBQ grill, shampoos and telling you to have a nice day seconds before you logout. CEO Jeff Bezos giggled, "We've often heard from customers that they miss the 'real' interaction of going to their local bookstores, so we've created the Swindle just for them. No more worries about parking, walking or unnecessary human interaction. Version one is already out of stock, and version two will have slightly less creepy-sounding voices. For version three, we're developing a mask you wear with it, in which a virtual bookstore smell that we've patented is puffed into our customers nostrils."
* Down 60% Is the New Up: Bookselling in Modern Times. Three booksellers from across the country will discuss what it's like selling in a depression. Meet rain or shine at the soup kitchen on the corner of Twelfth Avenue and 28th Street.
* Pick of the lists. Among other presentations, Craig Popelars, marketing director for Workman, will introduce the house's very limited, collector's edition version of Brock Clarke's An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. Rather than the more typical precious metal page leafing, the entire page block will be subjected to careful flame lapping prior to hard binding in a cover made from the fire-proof material used for firefighters' suits. As a coup de grace, the finished book will be packaged in a genuine fire alarm wall casing with a glass window, small hammer and instructions to "break glass in case of literary emergency." Popelars, who claims to have worked tirelessly on the project for months, said, "With a not-so-subtle price of $451, and the subtly applied scent of gasoline emanating from every page, demand should be epic!"
* Austerity R Us. Hear panelists from across the industry discuss how they're saving money. Among examples: the sales rep who ditched her wasteful car for Greyhound and Amtrak and the "green" assistant editor who refuses to print out MSs or makes photocopies--or much else, for that matter.
* The New Standard Book. Learn more about the new downsized standard book format being promoted by the AAP and BISG. (Excuse us: not downsized but rightsized!) The new format is 3" x 3", roughly the size of a smartphone--if a smartsphone were square. Presenters discuss the many advantages of the New Standard Book: it can fit easily in most pockets and bags; it is remarkably cheap to make, ship and store; its weight is barely noticeable; it encourages shorter narratives, which are so important in this ADD era. Only two "small" problems: the New Standard Book uses more hyphens than its predecessors, and the upcoming 23-digit ISBN takes up several pages.
--John Mutter, with many thanks to Jenn Risko, who contributed the item on Amazon's virtual handheld bookstore, and Alex Baker, who lit up the Workman item.