BookExpo America 2012
Last week, I promised to post about what I learned at
BookExpo America. Full disclosure: This was my first year attending, so I had
no concept of how quickly the day gets away from you when you’re navigating the
immense Javits Center in Manhattan—charging from booth to booth in the morning
and limping through them by the afternoon. If you ever go to BEA, be smarter
about your shoe choice than I was.
A feeling hits you when you first open the front doors (all
of which were plastered with Dean Koontz posters this year) and step into the
convention center. There you stand in the entryway, with its registration
tables that resemble airport ticket counters. Everywhere around you are people
whose life’s work is your life’s work: books.
But it isn’t until you go upstairs that you realize just how
expansive the book industry really is. As far as the eye can see are publisher
booths, autographing tables, workshops, and tech demonstrations—675,000 square
feet of them, to be exact. Yes, you read that right—over half a million square
feet of literary mayhem. It’s more ground than anyone can cover in a day. And
there’s more than just display copies and advance galleys—even C-SPAN 2 and its
Campaign 2012 tour bus were in the building. Most encouraging was the vast number
of new exhibitors.
A whole world of schmoozing unfolds on the exhibition floor.
Editors sit down with agents, publicists sit down with authors, etc. Business
cards fly from hand to hand, and they sometimes function as currency if you
want certain publishers’ catalogs. But nothing, and I mean nothing, beats the
author presence. There were all kinds of celebrities on deck Wednesday, and
that’s saying nothing of the celebrities in attendance on Tuesday and Thursday.
On the day I attended, there were author signings for Joyce Carol Oates, Jane
Seymour, Ian McEwan, Ina Garten, Rachael Ray, a host of popular YA authors, and
many others.
I had grandiose plans for the day and accomplished precious
few of them. There simply wasn’t time. I had hoped to go to the Lois Lowry
breakfast and the Neil Young/Patti Smith lunch event, but scheduling was not on my
side. I did, however, walk the floor with several of my colleagues and collect
catalogs from the competition. I dodged thousands of publishing executives, fellow
editors, librarians, booksellers, packagers, designers, layout artists, publicists,
agents, authors, book bloggers, and fans as I traveled from booth to booth. As I went,
I amassed a modest stack of advance review copies from various publishers. (A
word to the wise: Be selective when picking up freebies at an event like this. If
your timing is good, you’ll find that they flow pretty freely, but remember
that you have to lug them around all day.)
My most important lesson from BEA, however, came today when
I was back in the office. One of our executives told me that it was a good year to go
to the expo for the first time, as last year’s vibe was pretty subdued. After
all, Border’s was on the brink of closure back then, and e-book publishing
was still somewhat nebulous territory. That energy that hit me when I opened the
doors to the Javits Center was the current of an industry renewed.
So there are still homes for good manuscripts in the
traditional publishing sphere. I’ll keep doing what I can here on Julie’s blog
to help polish your prospective pieces. Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll be at
BEA doing a signing of your own.
—Ms. Shreditor
7 comments:
Thanks for such a vivid post! It makes me want to go next year even more!
I've been wondering about the BEA. This explains it beautifully. I love hearing the industry is renewed.
I got goosebumps reading your post--really I did. I imagined so clearly everything you described. I want to go! More than that, though, I want to be sitting in one of those booths looking up at people wanting my newest release.
I need to get back to my writing.
I would love to go to BEA someday, especially after reading this post. It all seems pretty intimidating, though, especially the it's-in-New-York-City part. :)
Good heavens, that sounds mentally and physically exhausting!
But I'm glad that there was positive energy there and that there's still plenty of hope for traditional publishing.
After all of the coverage this week, I feel like I have BEA fever. I'm ready to start planning for next year!
I really want to go. It sounds amazing! I hope in the next few years to be able to.
Thanks for your efforts. I was a first page volunteer and now have a contract with one of my dream publishers.
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