Joe's View

I spent most of Saturday wandering around the Jacob Javits Convention Center — in a bit of a daze — at the annual (and enormous) Book Expo America.
The five-day event brought together publishers, booksellers, reporters and authors to promote books and reading.
Some of the attendees from around the country were in a funk because of the plan to keep the annual BEA in New York City for the immediate future. The event was originally designed to move around the country each year; a very nice bookseller I met from Michigan told me she will miss going to places like Las Vegas that she might not ordinarily visit.
But much of the book publishing world is centered in Manhattan and the cash-strapped major (and minor) houses can save a lot in travel expenses by staying close to home.
A few BEA veterans mentioned that many of the publishers had smaller booths than usual and that a few major publishers decided to skip the event entirely.
It was my first BEA. More than one disgruntled indie bookseller complained to me about the cutback in galleys and Advance Reading Copies of forthcoming titles. Since I always seem to have more review copies than I could ever hope to read, I found the book talks and other promotional events to be more fun than carting bags full of ARCs home from the Javits Center.
The plummeting sales of books since the recession began last year cannot be denied, but one agent told me that the young adult market is booming at the moment.
“Parents won’t buy books for themselves, but they will buy them for their kids,” he said.
It was amusing to see the same sort of goofy gimmicks used to push books that you would see at any other trade show or fan convention. I ran into a woman dressed like a superhero on her way to some promo event and I couldn’t shake a very weird transgender clown who forced me to look at the children’s book he was hired to sell (Would you take a kids’ book from a John Wayne Gacy clone?).
Celebrated authors drew large crowds to talks and signings that were given in various parts of the Javits Center. The biggest gathering I saw was for pilot C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger (above, with his flight crew at the Super Bowl) for the forthcoming William Morrow book, “Highest Duty.” The memoir will give the inside story of that amazing commercial jet emergency landing Sullenberger made in the Hudson River last January.
Novelists in all genres — from Lorrie Moore to Reed Farrel Coleman — attracted long lines of book people who wanted their autographs.
I attended a very interesting afternoon tea devoted to the art of the audiobook where novelist Lisa Scottoline, celebrity memoir writer Kathy Lee Gifford, and actress (and audio book narrator) Katherine Kellgren talked about the way that books can be turned into memorable audio experiences.
Kellner held the crowd spellbound with a reading from L.A. Meyer’s “Bloody Jack,” a young adult novel about a girl in 18th century London who disguises herself as a boy in order to become a sailor.
Storytelling was around long before the book as a physical object came about and I have no doubts that it will continue to thrive on the Kindle or whatever other delivery systems the future might hold.