As I write this at the sprawling glassed Jacob Javits Convention Center on Eleventh Avenue, the Big Five publisher Hachette’s round marquis floats above the BookExpo America (BEA) floor. That floor is strewn with wooden crates and crawling with forklifts. BEA opens to the throngs Thursday.
About half a city block away from Hachette’s installation, the Amazon BEA compound is also being constructed. It will house the booths for KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing); CreateSpace (Amazon’s self-publishing print-on-demand service); and ACX (Amazon’s Audiobook Creation Exchange, which lets self-publishers produce their own audiobooks).
The Hachette and Amazon locations are not quite visible to each other. It’s unlikely that the slings and arrows of retail estrangement will fly here. The banners of Simon & Schuster, Random House, and Harlequin are between the French and the Seattlites: a branding DMZ is in place.
By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson
Writing on the Ether: The Talk of BEA: Amazon Blogs the Hachette Hoopla
Originally published by Thought Catalog at www.ThoughtCatalog.com