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BEA 2009: Austerity Measures - Larry Hughes
May 29, 2009
This is my first BEA as a “free agent.” In the past I always attended as a representative of a publishing company. This time I’m on my own. Without a booth to use as a base of operations, I was afraid I’d feel adrift and rootless.
Well, I do feel adrift and rootless, but so does everybody else. Because there are no booths.
That’s an exaggeration. Hachette has a substantial booth. In the current economic environment, it might even be considered ostentatious. I asked an employee how they could afford such an expense when everyone else is cutting back. “Because we’re making money,” he said. Neat trick!
Random House has a booth, but compared to RH booths of the past, it looks like somebody shrank it in the drier. Rumor is, employees are not allowed in unless they have a meeting scheduled. Lucky devils--I used to dream of being barred from the booth.
But many publishers, including some pretty big ones, decided to save a buck and forgo a booth this year. Instead, they’re operating out of “meeting rooms” located in the most curious out-of-the-way nooks and crannies of the Javits Center—nowhere near the show floor, but within tantalizing aroma distance of the food courts. They have curious designations like 2C49 or 1A74. Ask three Javits staffers where, say, 2B63 is and you’ll get three different sets of directions that will lead you to three different corners of the convention center.
Publishers are also saving money on badges by having employees share them. One employee uses it to gain entry, takes care of their business, then heads out to hand off the badge to the next employee. Bad idea! How am I supposed to pretend to remember somebody’s name if I can’t trust their badge? Awk-ward! It took me a while to catch on to this ploy, and I was amazed at how one major publishing company could have so many male employees named Sally.
Obviously these are austerity measures that publishers have fallen back on to save money in tough times. My question is, when the elusive recovery finally arrives and we’re all flush again, will they be rescinded? One publishing executive told me she expects each publisher to do a post-mortem and take the temperature of this show. If they deem it a success, even with no booth and a skeleton crew of staffers who all share the same name, they’ll have little incentive to drop big bucks on future shows. It’s possible we’ll see leaner BEAs for many years to come.
Click here for more BookExpo America 2009 coverage from PW.
Posted by PW's BEA Bloggers on May 29, 2009 | Comments (1)
