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BookExpo America — relevant for the Indian book industry

June 14, 2010 | By Ron Augustin

This year’s BookExpo America (BEA) concluded with excellent results for its exhibitors and other attendees. Close to 14,000 visitors came to the show -- 15 per cent more than last year, even though the exhibition days were reduced from three to two. The average number of unique visitors per day thus saw an increase of 54 per cent from 3,006 in 2009 to an unprecedented 4,624 this year. The main reason has clearly been the shift of business from the London Book Fair to BEA because of the air traffic disruptions that plunged the London fair into a shadow of itself last April. Most BEA participants therefore complained that a two day exhibition was far too short to do business, and sighed at the announcement that next year’s format will be back to 4 days -- one day for the annual conference, and three days for the exhibition halls.

Visitors at Book Expo America Photo : BEA

The Indian crowd at BEA is quite different from those attending the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs, as it is narrowed down to printing, prepress and IT service companies, with very few publishers making the trip from India. At this year’s BEA, Roli and Campfire were the only publishers participating as exhibitors, alongside the few Indian publishers with offices in the USA. In contrast, printers regularly attending BEA as exhibitors included Aegean, Ajanta, Repro India and Thomson Digital, while Equire Technologies, Ninestars and Outsource Publishing represented the prepress, digitisation and publishing service sectors. Aptara was represented by a local agent this year, and several Indian publishers and booksellers came without investing in a booth, preferring the off-floor meeting rooms instead.

More than a century ago, in 1902, Mark Twain was the guest speaker for the first official gathering of the American Booksellers Association Convention. It was held at New York’s Herald Square Hotel and 60 people attended. In 1947, the ABA Convention was renamed BookExpo America and has become the most important fair for the booktrade in the Americas, and one of the two most important trade fairs in the world for the English-language book market. In recent years, it was often held in Chicago and also in Washington DC and Los Angeles, but it really is having more success in New York, where it currently seems to have settled, at least until 2012.

Similar to LBF, BEA’s exhibits are all on the same floor. This year, it co-located with the International Digital Publishing Forum, the leading US eBook Conference including the IDPF Digital Book Zone, an exhibition of digital content, devices, applications and technologies. Apart from Apple’s iPad, this exhibition showed that there are plenty of different eReaders on the market, including six different versions produced by Hanvon based in China. Digital content offered on Google sites, Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad were also among the main topics discussed at BEA’s conference.

Penguin Group’s CEO David Shanks announced that a long-delayed agreement had now been reached to make Penguin titles available on Amazon’s Kindle reader. Several large publishers said that eBooks now make up nearly 10 per cent of their sales, and one publisher suggested that in five years time eBooks will make up more than half of the total book market. At present, publishers’ biggest concern is the pricing of digital content, with Amazon having created a precedent by fixing its Kindle content at a retail price of US$ 9.99 an e-book. Apple’s emergence as an eBook seller now enabled publishers to increase retail prices to between US$ 12.99 and 15.99. But Apple also forced a change in publishing’s traditional retail model, with the result that publishers are bound to reduce the authors’ cut in their contracts.

On the exhibition floor, there was a heavy presence of Spanish-language books, as Spain was this year’s Global Market Focus, addressing the large Hispanic communities in North America but also trading translation rights for Spanish literature. BEA’s show organisers noted that large contingents from the three major US retailers (Borders, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million) were in attendance, as were Amazon and buyers from Hastings, Urban Outfitters, Target, Costco, Wal Mart and other major retailers.

BEA’s organisers also noted that a record 1,700 members of the media attended the show, an increase of 41 per cent. Media presence has become an important priority as the book industry considers it an effective promotional opportunity. The organisers said they put in place a number of changes to increase awareness for authors and publishers, facilitate communication for the media, and position BEA for future growth in this area.

The next BEA will be held in New York, with the conference taking place on Monday 23 May, and the exhibition from 24 to 26 May, 2011.