Yawning at the Apocalypse: Thoughts from the BEA 2011 Showfloor

This time last year, I had been blogging for about six weeks before I went to BEA. The experience was eye-opening; I knew little about the world of publishing and publicity. It was exciting to get copies of books that I didn't yet know existed and wouldn't be available to the public for several months. There were also authors I admired signing around every corner.

A year later, I am more interested than excited. I pay much more attention to publishing news, so nothing at BEA was really a surprise. Also, my reading list is longer now that it has ever been, so there's quite a bit less room for serendipity or experimentation. So I turned up at BEA more for the spectacle than for the surprise.

Here's a few things I saw:

1. I think the rise of self-publishing reduced the number of oddball publishers and authors at BEA. For the entry fee, they can do quite a bit more online and ensorcel unsuspecting readers directly.

2. Imprints from the Middle East had some seriously huge and beautiful booths. Though, much like a mall in Dubai, they were huge, beautiful, and empty.

3. It's all well and good to know that China has some human rights issues, but it's another thing to flip through an English language Chinese magazine and see absolutely no critique or observation of anything wrong with any aspect of Chinese life.

4. There was one guy sitting the lounge outside the registration area with a weird hat advertising his book PROVING GOD. He sat there alone and made no move to pitch anyone his book or move about at all. I guess they don't make evangelicals like they used to.

5. It's one thing to know that romance moves the most units; it's another thing to see the Harlequin autograph lines. And it's another thing to try to cross those lines to saner ground.

6. Florence Henderson does not blink. Not in a metaphorical sticks-to-her-guns way, but in a Madame Tussaud's way.

7. The coolest thing I saw was Xerox's on-demand publishing set-up. This thing is basically the size of a washer and dryer and can spit out a pretty attractive paperback in a few minutes. I'm currently wondering if they will accept my left kidney as payment.

8.  In case there was an doubt, I am an elitist pig.

9. It's really too bad that the walk from Penn Station to the Javits Center is one of the 9 ugliest walks in Manhattan. The other eight are from behind dumpsters in the Lower East Side back to your apartment.

10. I thought e-galleys would be a big thing this year. I was wrong. You know what is a big thing? Publishers scared shitless of e-publishing.

11. Best way to spend your publicity dollars at BEA: complex carbohydrates. Cookies, whoopie pies, pastries, bagels, whatever. For 100 bucks worth of Oreos, you can have every librarian in New England visit your booth. Of course, then you have every librarian in New England at your booth. Kidding, librarians, kidding. We all love you. Now. Back in grade school you creeped us out.

12. The L. Ron Hubbard landing craft was a bit smaller this year, though it was more informative. Did you know you can get Dianetics in over 37 Earth languages?

13. I really want to care about self-published novels. I saw nothing that moved the needle for me though. (Keep it clean, Ape. Keep it clean).

14. Blogging about literature is exponentially more interesting that the publishing business. And more relevant too.

15. YA literature.....the enthusiasm for the genre blows me away. I wish literary fiction had as much juice going for it. Lines of people 100 deep waiting for autographs from people I had never heard of. Considerably shorter lines for Karl Marlantes autographs. Sigh.

16. Tote bag hoarding was in full effect. Saw one surly homonculus with about 12 bags completely empty freebies on his shoulder. Disconcerting.

17. A truckload of digital publishing businesses who all provide weirdly vague services. Can't help but think this is a kind of carpetbagging before the war is over.

18. Couldn't swing a dead cat without seeing something using an Ipad. I mean, my dead cat kept hitting those bastards.

19. Didn't realize it until I was out on the showfloor, but I am about ten times as interested in the Book Blogger Convention than anything the publishing business is hawking. Not a great sign for them.
___________________________

Buy books mentioned in this post (or anything else, actually) using the below links, and The Reading Ape gets a small referral fee to defray our nominal operating costs.

Amazon | Powell's Books | Shop Independent Bookstores

Book Blogger Convention 2010: One Primate's Reactions

As promised, here are some quick thoughts about the 2010 Book Blogger Convention:

• Keynote speaker and young adult Maureen Johnson was really entertaining. If I were a 12 year old girl, I would be racing out to get her books. I have to admit though that I'm not sure I learned much about blogging from it, but clearly the young adult bloggers got a kick out of it. 
• Ron Hogan, who runs Beatrice, was fantastic and I would have sat and listened to him all day. I have been reading Beatrice for more than a decade now, and he really is a pioneer of lit-blogging. Passionate, erudite, and encouraging stuff from him. Highlight of the day for the Ape, by far. Rumor has it he will be posting his presentation on Beatrice next week, so watch for that.
• I could have taken or left the panels (and indeed I did jet before the final one). I don't feel like I got anything out of them that I didn't looking at the panelists' blogs beforehand. Supremely nice and committed people, but that's why I read many of their blogs. 
• Biggest cheer of the day was for this line from Ron Hogan: "The war between critics and bloggers is over. And the bloggers won."
• Another spontaneous round of applause for NetGalley, of which I had never heard. Looks promising and we're going to give it a whirl. 
• The "keep doing what you're doing" and "be yourself" advice was ascendent. What if what you're currently doing sucks?
• Really happy group of attendees. We haven't been blogging long, but we can imagine how gratifying it was for people to meet in person after having years-long online relationships. It's hard to imagine a kinder, more congenial group of folks. Maybe kindergarten teachers.
• That said, the day felt a little self-congratulatory, though that's perhaps to be expected. This is the first one of these, and the excitement over the existence of the event itself propelled a lot of the energy of the day. Affirmation is necessary of course, but we're hard-pressed to say what we'll be doing differently around here as a result of what we heard.
• Random helpful tidbit: One publicist said to think of review copies as "for consideration" not "for review." That is, you should feel okay if you don't review a book you've been given. This sentiment was echoed by a couple of other publicists, along with an exhortation to pass the book along to someone else, really anyone else, if you don't review it. Or even if you do.
• Book bloggers love and want review copies. I might be wrong, but I think if they get no other material recompense for their efforts, a few ARCs would be enough. I love this about book bloggers--the books are the thing. 
• Mixed approaches to blog statistics. No one, including publishers and publicists, really knows how to gauge a blog's reach and influence with anything like accuracy. General consensus seemed to be to monitor your stats and use general trends rather than individual numbers. If your numbers are going up, great. If they are flat to down, maybe try some new things. 
• Use RSS. And full feeds. Don't screw around with this, just do it. Oh, how I wish you would listen McSweeney's.
• It might be selection bias, but the publishers in attendance seemed more than willing to work with book bloggers with interviews, tours, review copies, etc. The HarperPerennial folks were pretty tuned in. 
• Twitter seems to be the social media platform of choice, outpacing Facebook by a considerable margin as far as we can tell; it definitely was interesting to follow the live-tweeting, and do some ourselves, of the day.
• Not sure who said it (someone let me know if you remember because I'd like to give them proper due), but my favorite idea of the day was for book bloggers to consider themselves "book activists." We nodded vigorously.
• Couple of things we'd like to see next year: small group sessions, a presenter or panel on blog design, something about advertising and affiliate programs, a presentation from a publisher who works with bloggers directly, an overview of the history, present and future of book-blogging (OK, we'll admit it: we just want more Ron Hogan), and, most of all, we'd like to see there be a next year. 

Thanks to all those who put this thing together; I think you've started something good here. 

Oh, and if you're here on the Book Blogger Hop, well....welcome. Thanks to Jenn at Crazy for Books as always for hosting. 

A Neophyte's Impressions of Book Expo America

Well, that was something. I’m not sure what exactly, but it definitely was not nothing. A few scattered thoughts, observations, and curiosities from the exhibition floor of Book Expo America:

• While autographs have never really interested me, apparently they interest a great many of the bookish stripe. I wasn’t too surprised by the giant lines for Lemony Snicket or Fergie, but Gary Shteyngart? That’s when you realize you are in bizarro-world.
• Self-publishing is out of control--and a lot of desperate-looking authors around the self-publishing booths.
• Not as many review copies handed out as I somehow thought there would be. Picked up advance copies for new books by Paul Auster, Per Petterson, and Philp Roth (maybe I was only there for the “P” giveaways), but most of the available titles were decidedly second or third tier, though it makes sense; the new Franzen doesn’t really need hype.
• HarperCollins was giving out digital advance copies, and I picked up a stub for Elmore Leonard’s new novel Dijbouti. Now if I only had something to read it on…
• iPads destroyed Kindles. Saw the little buggers everywhere, but nary a Kindle in sight. Spent a couple of minutes with the enTourage eDGe. Verdict? Welcome to the dustbin of history, fella. And the strangest capitalization scheme since NyQuil. 
• The librarians were as thick as thieves. Seemed to travel in pods of 6-8 regularly and gave the proffered goods extreme scrutiny. As I tweeted from the floor, they are the band kids of the publishing business; they aren't exactly glamorous, but they are serious, tight-knit, and you ignore them at your peril.
• I was weirdly fascinated by the booths for bookstore supplies: shelving, display options, and bookish impulse buys. Who knew what cardboard could do?
• Even middle-aged executives can be lured with candy.
• There are a too many e-publishing answers looking for a question. We need some consolidation and standardization here.
• Amazon and Apple were surprisingly absent, so there were TWO 800-pound gorillas in the room.
• Google really, really wants us not to be nervous about Google Books. And that’s making people nervous.
• Shocked at the floor-space for children’s books. Seemed like a quarter to a third of the show. Now if only those ankle-biters would grow up to be readers.

All in all, an interesting, though not riveting, experience. Glad I went once. Looking forward to the Book Blogger Convention tomorrow--setting my nerd phaser to maximum.

On the Morrow: Book Expo America

Tomorrow, the Ape will swing through the Javits Center and Book Expo America to hunt two books and two books alone: Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and Jon Clinch's Kings of the Earth. 


Full impressions from the exhibition hall floor on Thursday, but follow us live on Twitter in the meantime: @readingape.

Friday, we'll be attending the Book Blogger Convention, where we're hoping to meet some fellow bloggers and pick up some ideas for these friendly confines.