‘A Serious Epidemic Of Impatience’ Here in New York City where BookExpo America (BEA) is holding the focus of many in the traditional publishing establishment, a friend and I were finishing lunch at Café Luxembourg when the waiter approached. “I overheard you guys talking about publishing,” he said. “I wondered if you could give me any advice about… Read More
'The Tsunami-of-Content Monster': #FutureChat recap
“Ninety percent want to publish a book? That sounds great to me!” Of course, that would sound great to Miral Sattar, wouldn’t it? Sattar runs Bibliocrunch, which connects writers and “author services.” I ran into Sattar as she was putting together her booth at the post-BookExpo America (BEA) Javits Center in New York on Saturday morning (30th May)… Read More
At BEA's IDPF Digital Book Conference: Youth Reading – Or Not
“How many of you think of your customers sitting in a chair reading a book?” Bookigee founder and CEO Kristen McLean got a goodly show of hands with that question as she opened her session on youth reading in the States at BookExpo America (BEA) on Wednesday (27th May). McLean focused on trends in young readers’ and teens’… Read More
Global dreams, local challenges: BEA amid transition
Amazon’s shadow, BookCon’s boost, IDPF’s confab, Chinese Trajectory, scalding-hot Scalzi: Must be BEA Just in time to chill the rising heat of late-May New York: news of troubled talks in the UK between the biggest bookseller and the biggest book publisher on Earth. As my colleague Philip Jones writes at The Bookseller, “Penguin Random House UK and Amazon… Read More
‘Publishing Goes Pop,’ Part 1: Can Reading Find True Fandom At BookCon?
‘There Was No Interest At BEA In…Readers’ BookExpo America (BEA) makes its annual appearance next week (27-29 May). It’s one of the world’s big-three publishing trade shows of the year, preceded in April by London Book Fair and followed in October by the largest of all, Frankfurt Book Fair. And while the show officially ends on Friday the 29th, it… Read More
Publishing For Digital Minds Conference Opens London Book Fair Monday
Setting The Tone In A New Setting Putting together a major publishing conference program is never easy. But putting one together to open one of the year’s leading trade shows is particularly tricky: there are a lot of competing interests, most of them on the commercial side of the industry. And the audience for one… Read More
Libiro, PODG, And A Flash Of Green
“The Libiro Platform Is Serving A Niche Market” It’s like the fabled “flash of green” said to be spotted at times just as the setting sun slips below the sea’s horizon: you’re never quite sure you’ve glimpsed the “indie-only audience.” You read mildly feverish references to these quicksilver consumers in blog comments, of course. Allusions… Read More
Publishing's southerly migration at BEA
“The sound of silence” has never muted the industry! the industry! On Tuesday in this pink space, The Bookseller’s Philip Jones neatly positioned “the continuing negotiations between Amazon and Hachette” as “how much heat can be generated from so little information.” In fact, Publishers Weekly’s Calvin Reid and I found ourselves talking of a mounting tone of hysteria around the publisher’s and retailer’s… Read More
“A Footprint on the Convention Floor”: BEA’s Author Hub
So Grumpy Cat got more rock-star cheers from the BookCon crowd at BEA than John Green did. Nevertheless, the trade show’s first-ever Author Hub for entrepreneurial authors held its own. And one author managed to sign and give away 500 copies of her book on Saturday. While those of us working on the Hub saw… Read More
The Talk Of BEA: Amazon Blogs The Hachette Hoopla
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… Read More