While everybody’s listening for the cha-ching of audio sales, the annual US industry trade show tries a couple of new attractions, including an entire parallel show of non-book items to help booksellers woo consumers
In 2018, the largest US book industry trade show, BookExpo, attempted to woo booksellers with a “reimagined” event. But even fewer booksellers made the trip to New York than in the previous year, despite added features. This year, BookExpo’s programming takes a different tack: focusing on audio and sideline items for bookstores.
The Audio Publishers Association conference is being held today (Wednesday), and has 600 registered attendees and a big waiting list. It’s designed for both publishers and narrators of audio, with sessions featuring business and production tracks.
Also new this year: non-books. UnBound is a new adjacent show and exhibit floor “dedicated to the best and most unique non-book items to grow your [bookstore] business.” These are items that booksellers might add to their store inventory. The wisdom of marketing non-book items to bookstore consumers has been debated for years; now we’re going to find out what happens when you toss them into the trade-show mix.
Fortunately, this year the New York Rights Fair comes home, if you will, to the rights-trading area and its proper place at the show (rather than being located a mile or two across town, as it was last year).
For American Booksellers Association visitors (those all-important bookstore owners), there are speed-dating sessions with editors from the publishing houses and publicists; as for the latter, “booksellers have the chance to promote their stores and discover what publicists look for when planning author tours.” Remember author tours? We don’t, either. (Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch notes that BookExpo show producer “Reed is flat out paying 200 booksellers to attend this year, providing $1,000 for travel expenses under the Booksellers Grant program” [subscription required].)
If you’ll be at the show, for sheer info, we’d recommend Kristen McLean of NPD Books on The Future of Kids’ Books as well as NPD’s general session The State of the Publishing Industry Today by David Walter. (Look for our highlights in the next issue.) The blue-ribbon panel of the show includes Penguin Random House USA’s CEO Madeline McIntosh discussing The Power of Retail with Tim Mantel of Barnes & Noble and Sourcebooks’ Dominique Raccah. NPR’s Lynn Neary will moderate.
Bottom line: The industry seems to have simply decided it’s audio’s turn. Even the keynote address for the show—usually a collection of Big Five publishing CEOs—is a panel that includes the VP and associate publisher of Hachette Audio, Kim Sayle, alongside author Jacqueline Woodson, New York Magazine’s Genevieve Smith, and Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks (which has just sold a 45 percent stake in itself to Penguin Random House). One longtime BookExpo goer tells us that now more than ever it feels as if the energy has moved to the weekend, when the public-facing BookCon takes over—heavy on the YA focus, as in the past.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
