BEA Day 1

So here are some of the things seen at Day #1 of Book Expo America, the biggest trade show for e book publishing industry in the United States...

The Rebellion/Solaris booth gave first look at a finished book copy of Dead of Veridon by Tim Akers, which goes on sale next week. Sometimes a book cover looks different on an actual book than in the steps along the way. This one looks nicer than I might have expected.

The Macmillan Audio catalog has a special "Just Announced" insert page for Mistborn: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. Because they hadn't planned to offer a retail consumer product, but I persuaded them to give it a think and they decided that they in fact should. Me happy. Next, trying to persuade them to provide physical consumer product for the original Mistborn trilogy. If you would like to see that, let me know.

Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner doing a joint book signing at the MWA booth. Hard to believe, but this is Charlaine's first ever trip to BEA, and tomorrow she is featured at one of the major breakfast events. This is one of those things as an agent that you dream of having clients important enough to be doing.

Roaming about the digital section, with an amazing assortment of eReaders that you haven't heard of, many of which are different than the two years ago eReaders you've never heard of, one of which has an office just a mile or so away from JABberwocky in Astoria/LIC that we've never heard of. Kobo, which is unveiling a new device, is the most prominent in attendance. No Nook or Kindle at BEA, neither is counting on mom and pop outreach or libraries for selling devices. Amazon has a stand for their publishing operations.

The show floor is mixed up from years past. Recorded Books is in the digital section and Tantor is only in the Rigths Center so audio row isn't this year. Major publishers have booths in strange locations. Due to renovations there is a blocked off section in the middle of the show floor which breaks up the expanse.

Who says you don't get free books any more? I picked up around 20 without even trying that hard. My parents and siblings will be getting some care packages!!

On the way over to Javits, seeing the mass market of Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings in the bestseller facing at Hudson News, which tells me Tor has put some money into getting good display for us on this book.

So just a few quick idle notes...

This past weekend was the Nebua Awards weekend event in DC. IT was a good and well run event, but I find it sad that only around 200 people show up for the awarding of one if the top prizes in SF. No representation that I saw for Orbit or Harper Voyager, as an example. Still I think it was a good networking opportunity for Myke Cole. I got to catch up with David Louis Edelman over good west African cuisine. I wad happy to see an Analog story by Eric James Stone win in one of the short fiction categories because Analog is very important to me, Stan Schmidt is important to me, and Eric James Stone is an author I like. Met a few agent- hunting young writers, so fingers crossed for when their partials arrive.

I could say more about both BEA and Nebulas, but will settle on this for right now.

BEA 2009, Pt. 3

There were two trends in evidence at Book Expo that I'm not fond of.

One is the switch to the electronic catalog, which was exemplified by HarperCollins, and which I started to see with some UK publishers at London Book Fair in April.

In some ways, the paper catalog is a relic of a past age, and I can admit that.  It's fixed.  The London catalog for JABberwocky will always be out of date by the time I actually get to London and start handing it out.  An electronic catalog can be updated regularly.  It's very expensive to mail.  Postage goes up every year, and my catalog gets bigger every year.  With the percent of sales coming from major accounts as big as it is, you spend that ever-increasing sum of money to attract orders from a smaller pool.

So yes, if I can cut back on the number I mail overseas after the Fair because more of my sub-agents are comfortable sending a PDF to more of the publishers they work with in a world of translation markets, that makes me happy.  Why, we even tried to enhance the PDF this year by turning the author names into links to the author's web site and by adding links from the contents page to the pages.  I'd even like to go further in coming years by maybe turning each book or series title into a link to the bibliography and/or review quotes on the JABberwocky web site.  Even if I might not want to pay to have the catalog updated along with the web site on a constant basis, it would make it very easy to get to the web site with the latest information, and most of those links would only need to be set up once and could then hold over as the catalog is updated in subsequent years.

But...  I cannot envision that I would ever go to London Book Fair without a printed catalog to talk over during my meetings, or that I would ever go to a major or minor convention without a few catalogs in my bag to give away.  If you worry about your catalog being on the bottom of some big pile, how much do you have to worry about the little postcard you give away with the URL to surf to later to get the catalog?  At London Book Fair,  Random House UK gave out postcards that often said "go to Randomhouse.co.uk" to get our catalog, which is just a generic home page link that requires you to find the right places to click to actually and finally get the on-line catalog.  Didn't anyone think for two seconds that they should at least give a dedicated link on that postcard that would go right to the catalog?

Yes, the unit cost for printing 500 catalogs or 5000 is more than for printing 15,000.  But it's penney wise and pound foolish not to print a single old-fashioned dead-tree version and rely entirely on electronic distribution.

I'm not a big fan of Harper's experiment in doing electronic galleys.  The good news is that they can give out a lot more postcards for the featured books with the link to the electronic galley than they can of an actual physical galley copy.  But I don't think any of the people in my family whom I traditionally scout galleys for at BEA will have an avid interest in being wed to their computer in order to read the books on offer from HarperColllins.  I meant to bring up some of the postcards last week when I was visiting family to see maybe if, but forgot.  This doesn't bother me quite as much as the catalogs because there is some clear possibility to end up distributing more free copies to the people who are willing, but I still think Harper would have been better off using these electronic galley cards to supplement some kind of old-fashioned print component instead of going entirely electronic.   I mean, one of the biggest flaws to me on the Kindle is that you can't tell what it is that somebody's reading.  I'd love to have,  maybe with user option, a little screen on the back side that can display the cover of whatever it is you're reading.  I hate that people don't know I'm enjoying The Washington Post on my Kindle, or that I had no way of knowing what the guy with a Kindle 2 was reading on the subway ten days ago. Harper may know how many people decide to download each electronic galley, but the rest of the world won't be seeing any visible sign of Harper's big new books.

BEA 2009, Pt. 2

I did promise some more posts about Book Expo America...

One of the most important questions of all is whether BEA has a future.

BEA was once known as ABA, and was the official annual show for American Booksellers Association.  The Book Expo America thing was intended to broaden the event.  It still has ABA involvement but is run by the same Reed Exhibitions people that do London Book Fair and many other non-publishing shows.  It was intended as the big opportunity for booksellers and librarians to connect with publishers, find out about their fall lists specifically, meet authors and one another, place orders, etc.

I've never seen BEA as entire essential myself.  In large part because I can probably do 90% of what I'd like to do in a single day, so if it's in NYC and you can go for a day you can go for a day, but it's not something really worth traveling very far to attend.  DC, quick train ride, maybe.  Chicago enh.  LA not.  But the show would move around to these various places, theoretically so that booksellers from different parts of the country would have it near them every once in a while.  

But there are big problems with all of the long-time theoretical purposes for having BEA.  There are fewer independent booksellers in the world, and major publishers certainly don't need a BEA to sell their lists to B&N, Borders, Amazon, and other major national accounts.  BEA is expensive.  Especially if you're a big publisher used to having a big booth and dozens of staff members in attendance, and maybe flying in authors as Tor did this year with Brandon Sanderson.  Especially in the current economy, a lot of libraries and small booksellers and smaller publishers have a much harder time justifying their expenses.

So I am hugely worried that we're going to see a downward spiral start to take root that may end up killing off BEA.  And even though I don't think BEA is essential, I'm not sure the publishing industry would be better off without.  But there are signs.

Some big publishers decided not to take big booths.  Macmillan USA was entirely off the show floor, and doing meetings invitation only in a basement meeting room.  I got to go in because Brandon Sanderson and I were meeting with Macmillan audio people.  But it wasn't very welcoming.  No food or drink, really.  I asked at a Holt table if I could take a galley for a book I thought my sister might find interesting, and I wasn't made to feel very welcome.  Tom Doherty at the Tor imprint of Macmillan explained to me at length how a floor space cost $x to try and sell to the 10% of their sales that might be resulting from independent booksellers, and how that $x might be able to buy two more field reps to sell books.  Knowing how publishers work and how many of them under-invest in their sales efforts, I have my doubts that the money saved by having no floor presence for Tor, St. Martin's, Holt, Farrar Straus and other Macmillan imprints will be spent on two field reps.

Harcourt/Houghton Mifflin was somewhat better, with a two-sided meeting room with a private section and a public section.  You still had to traipse to the basement, but at least you could go in, look at tables with catalogs and some galley copies, and have some serendipitous exposure to their lists.

Random House cut their floor space back to a few tables for author autographings and some catalogs available for pick-up but did most of their business in a basement meeting room.

Other publishers like Wizards of the Coast and Kensington did not have their traditional presence on the floor, either skipping or going the meeting room only route.

The upshot of this was that there were distinctly fewer people on the exhibit floor giving away distinctly fewer quantities of things.  I still did OK getting galleys for my book-group sister and my Amazon Vine younger brother and my media specialist older brother, but it was definitely harder.  If it's harder to score swag, it makes BEA less appealing to booksellers and librarians, and even for that matter to me.   That might reduce attendance, which might make it less attractive for any of these publishers to return to the exhibit floor or for publishers like Harper and Hachette that still had major floor presences to continue to have in the future, etc. etc.

After a disappointing attendance in LA last year, the organizers decided to keep BEA in NYC only for the near future.  This reduces costs for the major NYC publishers and puts the show in the media capital of the world (well, LA kind of is, but in a different way) and is probably a good idea.

The internet is a wonderful thing, but it does lend itself to finding things you already know you want to find.  I think there's a benefit to showing the flag, to opening yourself to serendipity, to see and to being seen.  For all of these very fuzzy reasons that have a hard time competing with $x to have a big booth on the floor, I think the industry needs BEA. 

We'll see what happens.  There were still hundreds of publishers and thousands of attendees and I do not think a disappearing act like BEA Canada is in the future.  But I worry.

More to come...

BEA 2009, Pt. 1

BEA, or Book Expo America, is the big trade show for trade publishing in the United States, and was held in New York City a couple weeks ago.  I'll do some posts over the next several days either about or inspired by the event.  Here are some photos I took (or in some cases, mis-took, because they're blurrier than we would want; I guess I'm not a professional photographer).

The first comes from inside the Javits Center, where a nice Sookie Stackhouse display was at the front entrance to the Penguin booth.  Very nice views of the current DEAD AND GONE hardcover and the True Blood Season 2 tie-in edition cover for LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS.  I am very fond of both.  And then there was the big, bold, beautiful True Blood billboard on W. 39th St. at the intake into the Lincoln Tunnel, and isn't that a nice way to start and finish the day heading to and from the Javits Center each day.

The next very blurry picture was taken at the Prometheus Books booth.  The wonderful Pyr SF line edited by Lou Anders is part of the Prometheus empire, and they had a big poster up for GEOSYNCHRON, the concluding novel in the Jump 225 trilogy by David Louis Edelman.  Prometheus was also giving out copies of the new premium-size mass market edition of CROSSOVER by Joel Shepherd, so the JABberwocky list was well-represented in this corner.

  

At the Severn House booth, it was nice to see the forthcoming historical mystery ANGEL OF THE GLADE by Scott Mackay on their display shelf.    And there on the right, I'll also mention Marcia Talley's new book, because Marcia Talley is a wonderful person whom I've known by way of Charlaine Harris for many many years.  It always brings a smile to my face when I see Marcia, and it brings a smile to my face to see her book at BEA as well.

Finally, this was a very special BEA because it's the first time in all my years in the business that I had an author officially at BEA, with an official signing in the official signing area and on a panel and totally getting the full royal BEA treatment.  So we have a picture of Brandon Sanderson participating in a panel with 

Jonathan Tropper for authors of books that had been mentioned in the Editor's Buzz panel the day before, and then we have a picture of Brandon doing his official signing of copies of new novel WARBREAKER while his editor Moshe Feder is standing up in order to take a picture of Brandon's very long signing line. Brandon also had an ALA autographing and did an interview for BookSpotCentral.  He and I met up with the people at Macmillan Audio and recorded some video that will be used to promote the audio release of The Gathering Storm.  We discussed possible comic book adaptations of Brandon's work with a couple of comic book publishers.  

I should have taken pictures at the JABberwocky dinner, where Brandon joined myself, my JABberwocky associate Eddie Schneider (celebrating his first anni on the JABberwocky team, Peter V. Brett, the publisher of Recorded Books, our man in China, our summer interns, and World's Biggest Bookstore bookseller Jessica Strider and her husband at Rachel's.  A good time was had by all.  It was my first time going to Rachel's, and I will happily go there again.  It's convenient to the theater district and the food generally received high marks.