WritersNewsWeekly.com BEA 2008 Walk Through

By Lisa Burns

After months of prep work and over-time, Book Expo America went off without a hitch in sunny Los Angeles, CA. Traffic jams aside, the BEA in LA was a pleasant experience, with over 28,000 people in attendance at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Keynote speakers at the expo included Alec Baldwin, Magic Johnson, Phillippa Gregory and Andre Dubus III.

The event was a who’s who of the industry; anyone who is anyone attended the expo. Large and small publishers alike displayed their 2008 titles, scheduled autograph signings and podcasts, while networking with movie producers, agents and fellow publishers.

Whether or not this was a successful BEA cannot yet be determined; after three days of exchanging business cards and emails, the impact of the event will be measured by the number of new clients that will surely utilize the services promoted at BEA within the next few months.

Despite the attendees high-energy, attendance was down this year in LA. According to Publishers Weekly, total registration at the BEA was 28,494. Despite the low numbers, attendance was higher than it was the last time BEA was in Los Angeles, back in 2003. The total number of people registered was down from last year’s expo in New York, where 36,112 attended. BEA insiders blame the decline in numbers on a drop-off of librarian attendance, due in part to the fact that many BEA library outreach programs are located on the east coast.

The buzz around BEA this year was all about Kindle. On Friday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos addressed attendees in a standing room only crowd about the e-reading device, assuring the audience that Kindle will not hurt the print publishing world. The digital book reader, priced at $389 on amazon.com, already accounts for 6% of the company’s bookselling business. To add fuel to the fire, Simon and Schuster announced that it would add an additional 5,000 titles to the Kindle format. To date, Kindle offers 125,000 downloadable volumes.

First-time authors had the opportunity to mingle with big players in the publishing world, including Judy Blume and James Patterson, along with many actors-turned-authors, including Brooke Shields, Marilu Henner and Jamie Lee Curtis.

What do you expect—it is Hollywood after all!

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