Even though BookExpo America is, logically, all about the books, some of my lasting impressions of the trade show are not. I remember walking on the sands of Miami Beach during my first ABA convention in 1993, wearing a suit--pants legs rolled up, carrying my shoes and socks--and wondering if I could possibly look less cool and more bookish if I tried. 
For BEA 2010, however, the impression that will stay with me is about the books, or more precisely the booksellers. It happened Thursday on the exhibition floor when I saw Jessica Stockton Bagnulo and Rebecca Fitting of Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y., and realized this was the first time either of them had attended the show as bookshop owners.
It was a special moment. I've known them for several years and have watched as they carefully built Greenlight from a great idea into a great indie bookstore. At BEA, we chatted briefly and then went back to work because, well, we were working.
Jessica later shared her thoughts about being at the Javits Center this time: "It was so interesting to talk to folks like Chris Morrow and Carol Horne and Rick Simonson and Steve Bercu and others this year at BEA as a peer, rather than just an aspirational frontliner. Our stores and our challenges and triumphs are so distinctly different, but there are so many common threads. It's like we're all the captains of different ships. Paul Yamazaki and Rick came into the store the other day and I was kind of star-struck--it will take me a little while to feel really like an equal to people like that, but I'm honored to be among them."
There were many other moments at BEA that made an impression on me: observations, comments, statistics, even the unique scent of eau de Manhattan that hung in the 85-degree air Wednesday afternoon as I elbowed my way back to my hotel near Broadway amid the matinee throngs.
I don't know if this qualifies me as a word impressionist, but I did fill (product placement alert!) a Moleskin notebook with verbal sketches from the show, and I'll share a few of those here.
"There is some cannibalization going on," said Kelly Gallagher, Bowker's v-p of publishing services, while offering an early look at BISG's third fielding of "Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading." That word "cannibalization" came up a lot during education sessions in reference to whether e-books are displacing print books, especially hardcovers. May I suggest another word as a possible solution? "Exophagy," which is cannibalism outside a tribe or family.
Gallagher also said that in Japan mobile e-books, which are read by 86% of high school girls, are "re-growing the print market," and noted that 10 of the bestselling Japanese print novels in 2007 were based on cell phone novels, with each selling around 400,00 copies while "growing new readers in Japan."
At an education session called "Community Social Networking: A Guide for Retailers and Librarians," business book authors Charlene Li (Open Leadership) and David Meerman Scott (The New Rules of Marketing and PR) spoke about the now accepted fact in business that "it's all about relationships and sharing."
When considering where best to focus efforts among the cacophony of online options available, Li advised, "You have to start from your place of strength and build up."
"What I see is all of us are trying to generate attention," added Scott, who explained that before the Web, the three primary ways to do this were buying (advertising, etc.), begging (press releases, media relations) and hiring salespeople. With the increasing role of the Internet, however, a fourth way has emerged--earning attention. "I think that every single organization in the world, every person, is now a publisher of information."
He also advised booksellers and librarians to take advantage of free author-generated content for their websites. Writers "create lots of free content--blogs, free e-books, videos--and we are thrilled when somebody wants to syndicate our content. It's interesting how few people ask us for that kind of content."
Todd Stocke, v-p, editorial director at Sourcebooks, mentioned something to me that has also become one of my lasting impressions of this BEA, and perhaps signals where we're headed as well. He said that a few years ago, Sourcebooks altered its approach to booth design for the show. "We made the choice to have a less elaborate booth and room for more people," Stocke observed, emphasizing the importance of conversations, both scheduled and unexpected, on the exhibition floor. "You never know when just the right person is going to come by."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)