The Hot Sheet will be at BookExpo this week, and our next edition (June 14) will offer highlights from the show. As we go in, however, it’s worth noting some of the points that make this year’s event distinctive. The week’s schedule:
- Wednesday, May 31: Conference sessions produced by BEA itself (rather than by outside groups, as in the past).
- Thursday and Friday, June 1 and 2: The trade show (open for industry professionals).
- Saturday and Sunday, June 3 and 4: BookCon, the fandom-energized public event.
As we wrote in our April 5 edition, programming for self-publishing authors is no longer. The Author Market area—in which indie authors can buy a table to exhibit on the trade-show floor—has been downsized a bit as well, although there may have simply been fewer takers. (The Alliance of Independent Authors is holding one of its Indie Author Fringe online events on June 3 in conjunction with BookCon, in case you’re interested.)Those of us who follow publishing on the international scale are especially aware that this year’s Market Focus program—which would normally bring a nation’s or region’s publishing players to what used to be called BookExpo America—has been reduced to three or four sessions on international topics, with no guest-of-honor nation attached, as Poland was last year at the Chicago BEA. There’s an irony here in that organizers removed America from the conference’s name—although we still call it BEA—so that the show could be perceived as having a more international flair. Instead, as Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch (paywall) has noted, BEA’s reduction to two days of floor display makes it harder for international exhibitors to justify the expense of attending. In fact, Cader observes that just 10 nations are expected to exhibit this year (down from an average of 25), though visitors from some 70 nations are included in attendance.
Also, the show’s overall size is being adjusted downward. With a smaller footprint than last year’s Chicago show, and with a focus on professionally engaged attendees over bloggers and indie authors, BookExpo is reported to be 94,000 square feet, down from 126,000 square feet when it was last held at Javits in New York City.
Bottom line: As BookExpo retrenches against historically falling attendance and exhibitor numbers, we’re reminded that it, like London Book Fair, is produced by a non-publishing entity, Reed Exhibitions. (ReedPOP, a division of Reed, is organizing BookExpo.) In some ways, it’s incredible that a trade-show producer can function coherently in 15 or more industry sectors, from aerospace to security and safety. While London seems to have kept its mission and performance more intact than BookExpo has, we have to wonder if a company that produces cosmetics and hairdressing events can continue to logically produce trade shows for industries as upended as publishing. We’ll have more in June.
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.
