PW's BookExpo America Blog

May 31, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (26)

Today's the day no one shows up, right? The day that causes some folks to wonder, why even have Sunday if no one comes? This actually came up, in a meeting of the Conference Advisory Board for the programming dimension of BEA, which I was on. Many of us thought it might be a rather good idea to take this chance to open the show to the general populace on the Sunday, since, you know, we don't really have enough to keep us busy otherwise. And it hadn't escaped our attention that motivating customers to buy books, meet authors, get jazzed for stuff coming down the turnpike would be good for, you know, the whole book industry.
It also hadn't escaped our attention that while Reed, the folks who organize this show, seemed able to pull in 77,000, enough to warrant adding a s...Read More
Industries: BookExpo America, Events

May 30, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

This year, there seem to be as many BEAs as there are attendees—its beauty or ugliness is in the eye of almost-but-not-quite-as-many beholders as in previous years. Ed Champion is bewildered by the absence of hustle for Pynchon; Cader is parsing the numbers; Mike Shatzkin thinks the show has 4 years left, Don Linn worries this could be the last, but the general consensus is that there is no consensus beyond a little bit down is the new up, and a little bit in the red is the new black.

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Industries: BookExpo America, Events

May 29, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

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...Read More

Industries: BookExpo America, Events

May 29, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

On this, the first day of BEA, the New York Times reports that Microsoft has launched a new internet search service called Bing.

Bing? Really?

My first impulse was to check in with Fortune Magazine columnist Stanley Bing, the author of Crazy Bosses, Executricks, and several other bestselling business humor books. As it turns out, Bing had already issued a press release expressing “moderate outrage” at this “unprecedented case of brand intrusion,” pointing out that  he has been cultivating the Bing brand since 1983, while Microsoft “has been establishing the Bing brand for about seventeen minutes.”

...Read More
Industries: BookExpo America, Events