So what did you think about this year’s Book Expo America?

So what did you think about this year’s Book Expo America? This year Book Expo was back in New York City for the first of five consecutive years.  As a New Yorker, I love the idea of not having to fly off to some exotic place like Chicago or LA but as an industry “insider”, and no nonsense type realist, I am a bit skeptical at the motive behind the move. (Click here to read more)

I have been going to Book Expo since the mid 90’s.  For those of you that might not know much about this show, it is the largest bookseller wholesale trade show in the US.  In theory, bookstore owners and buyers of all shapes and sizes should be coming to this show to order books from publishers for the upcoming season.  Most of the major publishers and many of the smaller US publishers exhibit at this event.  From an exhibitor standpoint, it is extremely expensive to participate in this event.  As with all trade shows, while sales are the primary reason for exhibiting, there are many secondary reasons like networking and exposure and seminars that also come into play.

This year, we decided to take a booth in the Children’s Book section and showcase some of the publishers we helped who published children’s books.  We offered our small publishers the opportunity to participate in the show, in a shared booth, at a fraction of the cost it would have been to exhibit on their own.  In addition to the regular group from Self Publishing/RJ Communications, 6 authors also joined us. We had a great location, directly across from one of the major children’s book publishers, almost guaranteeing buyer traffic to our booth.

As always, there was much anticipation as we set up the booth on Thursday.  Maybe this would be the year the head buyer from Barnes & Noble or Borders would visit and show an interest in some of our independently published books. Three days later, the booth was coming down and being put away for another year. How did the show go?  It depends on who you ask.  Our authors seemed to be happy enough.  For a new publisher, it is hard to not be impressed by the whole experience.  While they didn’t sell a single book that I know of they all left with a feeling of accomplishment and ready to go home and “hit the bricks” selling books.  They left the show with a feeling of accomplishment and a better knowledge of the whole publishing process.  Most said they were eager to it again next year.

From my point of view, the show came up short on my expectations.  This may have been partially to do with the fact that my son’s high school graduation was the day before the show setup day and my two one year old grandkids were visiting my house, overnight, for the first time. But my overall opinion of the show was that there needs to be some major changes or it would soon go the way of so many others.  The traffic on the usually high traffic day of Saturday, felt more like the lightly traveled Sunday. Sunday was even worse.  The idea of being directly across from a major publisher was good, I guess, but the bookstore buyer traffic never seemed to make it across the aisle. In fact, traffic in the entire children’s book section seemed to me to be low. The official word from the show management was that traffic was down 16% from the last New York Show.   I assume that number is accurate because these shows get audited but a show is more than the number of attendees.  Unlike most shows, where the actual buyers are given easily identifiable name badges so the exhibitors could pick them out of a crowd, everyone’s name badge looks the same…whether they are a book buyer from Barnes & Noble, looking to buy books…… or Aunt Mable from Omaha looking to get a free autographed sample.

Next year the show has been cut to two days instead of three and has been moved to the middle of the week.  I am not sure exactly why this decision was made.  On the surface, the move is fine with me.  I won’t have to give up my weekend next year to attend a trade show. All the local New Yorkers should feel the same.  But how about the bookstore buyers?  Will they still come? Travel expenses are always higher during the week than on the weekend. How about the small store owner, whose spouses might work fulltime jobs? How’s that going to work?  Is the spouse going to take a few vacation days or is the owner going to stay home and save the money?  My vote goes with the latter. Only time will tell.  Am I planning on exhibiting in 2010?  Sure, I’ll be there.  Hopefully there will be a large push for local traffic.  We’ll see.

How about the rest of the show?  Anything interesting to report? One of the more interesting things I saw at the show was the display showcasing the Espresso Book Machine. Ever hear of a guy named Rube Goldberg?  Rube Goldberg, Reuben Lucius Goldberg (United States cartoonist who drew intricate diagrams of very complicated and impractical contraptions that accomplished little or nothing (1883-1970))

His last invention may very well have been this book machine.  The concept is simple.  A single machine that can print and bind a commercially acceptable book, on demand, in a very short period of time…something like a coke machine for books.

I sat and watched the machine run for about 20 minutes while I talked with a friend of mine.  An operator, with shirtsleeves rolled up and a screw driver in hand was frantically tinkering with the machine. After 20 minutes, I had yet to see a book produced, and this was the manufacturer’s display.  My imagination started getting the best of me as I pictured my 18 year old son working in a bookstore as a summer job with the same screw driver and hopeless look as the customer either left or picked up a printed book off the shelf somewhere else in the store.  Needless to say, I’m not running out and paying $100,000 for one of these little devils.  The idea is sound and maybe even practical one day. I don’t think that day is today.   I’ll go take a look at it again in 2010.  A little history note…. When the first color digital presses hit the market, they were so unreliable that if you bought two, the manufacturer would send a technician along to keep them running at no extra cost.  That was a long time ago, though.  But… we’ll see.

How about Kindle? I had heard so much hype concerning Kindle prior to Book Expo; I was half expecting to not see a single printed book on display and just thousands of starry eyed people hugging their Kindles.  Well, it’s going to take more than Oprah telling people to do something to make it work.  I noticed that one of my old publishing customers, a major New York children’s book publisher, had a sign in their booth that their books were now available on Kindle.  I asked the president of the company how sales were going.  He smiled and told me, “We have sold 10 so far… I bought 5 and one of the VP’s bought 5”.  Nuff said.  Like the Book Machine, maybe one day millions of people will be reading tens of millions of books on a single source book reader.  But don’t hold your breath.  Yes, the New York Times is available on Kindle, but look at the reason why.  Converting to e-book format just to save money at the printer is not a marketing program; it’s a lifeboat on a sinking ship.  Keep your eye on the ball.. or more correctly, the printed book.

How about the POD Publishers… did they have a large presence at Book Expo? – Ten years ago I made the point that if these Vanity/POD/Subsidy Publishers were really publishers, why weren’t they at Book Expo… Not long after that, they all had large booths at the show manned with dozens of smiling salespeople.  This year…. The largest Vanity Press of them all, Author Solutions , who owns Author House, IUniverse, Xlibris and Trafford, had a single 10×10 booth with a few men in suits sitting in chairs behind a table.  Lulu?  Didn’t see them there at all. Booksurge?  Didn’t see them there either.  I guess we’re back to the Vanity Press publishers really aren’t publishers now… are they?

See you next month

Ron Pramschufer

Ron Pramschufer has been in or around the printing and publishing industry for over 35 years. His experience, including working in the pressroom, bindery, production office and estimating department helped give him a firm foundation to build on when he entered sales and management. He was partners in a small press publishing company in Annapolis, MD in the late seventies and co-invented and marketed two controversial political board games which sold over 100,000 copies in the early eighties. Moving from his home state of Maryland to New York City after his game experience, Ron sold printing services to, primarily, small to mid-sized book publishers for over a decade before founding RJ Communications with an old friend. Ron recognized the potential of the Internet very early as a powerful communications tool. In 1997 he started one of the first printer related websites, www.rjcom.com, which caters to the professional print buyer. This evolved into www.BooksJustBooks.com and more recently www.selfpublishing.com which target the print buying novice, primarily self-publishers. All three sites are still operating successfully and SelfPublishing.com was named as one of Writers Digest’s, 101 Best websites for writers for 2006. Educating the novice print buyer has been a top priority from day one. To help address this issue, Ron co-authored the popular title Publishing Basics- a Guide for the Small Press and Independent Self-Publisher, now in its Third Edition, as well as Publishing Basics for Children’s Books, in its Second Edition. He is the organizer of the monthly Publishing Basics Newsletter where he writes a sometimes controversial Ask Ron column which addresses various aspects of the publishing process. On the same note, he started the Publishing Basics Radio PodCast in 2005 and serves as the show’s host. A wide variety of topics are covered including a very popular series titled, The Truth Behind POD Publishing, where he conducts interviews with a select group of industry insiders. Since its inception, RJ Communications has helped thousands of customers print over 105 million books. Ron is married and has three children. His daughter, Stephanie, teaches second grade and recently self-published her first children’s book in the Oliver the Clownfish series. Matthew, his oldest son, owns a website design business and Erik, the youngest, is enjoying high school.

Website - More Posts