Publishing Trade Show Networking Site PubMatch.org Launches

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 4/14/2009 9:45:00 AM

Sister companies Combined Book Exhibit and The American Collective Stand have launched PubMatch.org, a service that will help facilitate business taking place between book related trade shows, and help exhibitors and attendees make the most of their time at shows. Visitors to the site can create free profiles as publishers, agents, agencies, authors or illustrators; post titles or work samples; and network with other companies or individual people.

PubMatch encourages users to indicate what book fairs they’ll be attending, and include their booth numbers so others can find them on the show floor. The site is searchable by trade show. PubMatch founder and CBE president Jon Malinowski said he hopes the site will help agents, publishers and agents plan their appointments at shows, and also keep communication between them open “for the months between major trade shows.” The PubMatch site will include 140 subject tags for agents and publishers who want to post what rights are available for a book. There will also be space for cover art and the site will have the ability to let rightsholders set how much of the book they want to be viewable on the site.  

There is no cost to register on PubMatch, and Malinowski is not taking any cut of a deal that gets done through the site, expecting to support PubMatch through advertising. PubMatch began a soft launch three weeks ago and has had more than 2,000 hits from 18 countries and has had several publisher sign up for the service, a number of authors and two literary agencies, Malinowski said.

BookExpo America has endorsed PubMatch and plans to use it for its pre-show online networking.