How did Book Expo America work out this year?

How did Book Expo America work out this year? Going into this year there were lots of question marks concerning this yearly event. It moved from three days to two and moved from the weekend to the middle of the week. The show was condensed from two floors to one. Add to this the fact that the US is in an extended recession with little good news in sight. Now that the smoke has cleared, it’s time for an assessment of the whole week, so if you’re interested in my opinion… read on

Book Expo America started off for me the same way it has for the past fifteen years. Eight months ago , I was all excited. So excited that I signed up for a larger booth than we had ever had in the past. While it was hard to point to much actual business attributed to attendance at the show in the past, maybe this would be the year! After all, we had eight months to prepare. Well, time flies when you’re having fun, I guess, and those eight months went by lightning fast. As with previous shows, I found myself scrambling around at the last minute trying to figure out the “theme” for the year. We had worked our way around the show over the past decade or so looking for the perfect spot. This year we had a double booth on an aisle leading into the small press area. We stuck with a fairly plain booth and shared it with a handful of our author/publishers. I say fairly plain…. If you haven’t displayed at a trade show in New York lately, fairly plain does not mean, fairly inexpensively.

Try to follow this one and you’ll figure out my long term opinion of the future of shows like this. First off, my 160 sq foot booth cost $5340. Included in this price was… nothing. I take that back, I think I got a small cardboard sign with my name on it. There was also some draping, to separate me from the display in back of us. The booth came with a concrete floor that we were obligated to cover with carpet. Looking online it looked like the closest thing to a 10’ X 16’ piece of carpet was a 9’ X 20’ piece for $433. When I went to order, however, I was told that I was in a “special” booth and that “special” pricing would apply and my 10’ X 16’ carpet would cost over $600. Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed. We went ahead and ordered our other “props”, figuring to come back to the carpet later. As I mentioned above, our booth props included 2-Director Chairs @ $192.60ea, 2-4 foot tables @ 173.30ea and a two foot display cube@ 303.80 for a total of $1036.20 for two days use.

Now back to the carpet. My Book Expo Rep is a very nice woman who I have been working with for quite some time. I know that all this is out of her control but she is my only contact so she receives the initial brunt of inquiries. You know the old saying about raising the bridge or lowering the river? Well, the solution to the carpet was a classic. The decorating company wouldn’t budge from their position that my special pricing was 50% higher than the standard pricing for a larger booth. The problem was solved by extending my booth from 16 to 20 feet…. thank you Lisa. Then the very same person, who wouldn’t budge on the carpet pricing, happily took my order at the lower price. Pretty amazing, huh? Not that $433 for a piece of cheap carpet, used for 2 days, was any bargain. It was better than $600+. The total for that part came to $1469.40 plus a $130.41 tip for the City of New York.

In addition to the “rentals”, we bought two nice cardboard book displays from www.BookDisplays.com and walked them through the front door of the convention center on setup day. I highly recommend this company for anyone looking for standard or custom displays. Their product is good and, unlike the BEA decorating company, their pricing is fair. We also bought a hanging banner for the booth, from a printer friend, for $300. That left one final charge of $40.50 for a person to walk a single carton from the loading dock to our booth. That brought our total to $7280….. $3640/day. While that $3640 is less than it costs for a day in the intensive care unit of a local hospital, it is still a lot of money.

The show itself went pretty well, as far as shows go. It WAS nice to have my weekend back. The traffic seemed fairly steady, and I picked up a few business cards from suppliers wanting to do business with me. The authors in our booth had a pretty good experience and, relatively speaking, was not all that expensive for them to be an active part of the show. I didn’t hear of any large orders, but that is pretty typical for this type of show.

Will I be back next year? I haven’t reserved any space yet for 2011 but that’s pretty typical. Ask me the same question closer to the end of the year. I hear that the show is back to 3 days next year but that third day won’t make up my mind one way or the other, unless BEA would make that third day an “Open to the Public” retail day, which I have been suggesting for years…. but I doubt you’re going to see that happen.

Now that I have vented about the ever increasing cost of displaying at a major trade show like Book Expo, let me tell you about two very positive things I was involved with during the Book Expo week.

The first was my participation in the New Title Showcase. For $200, an author could have their book displayed, face out, in a bookstore like setting in the main lobby of the Javits Center. In addition, the title was also included in a printed catalog and a special New Title Showcase website. I paid to have my book, Publishing Basics – Navigating the Self Publishing Minefield, right along with hundreds of other titles. As an author, I certainly felt like I got my $200 worth. Did I get a big order from Barnes & Noble as a result of this display? Not yet, but I haven’t checked the mail for the day. At the end of the day, I feel like the authors I worked with, got their money’s worth and I will offer it again next year. I also plan to offer similar display space at other shows. Of course, with any of these, I will not offer something that I wouldn’t buy myself so we will always “sink or swim” together.

Speaking of “sinking”, I should probably devote an entire article to this but, for now, I’ll just make mention of it. The new title show case was a series of bookcases with the header “New Title Showcase” at the top of each case. The display looked good. The notable exception to this was from our friends from Vanity Press land. An author from one of these vanity presses came to my booth in the main hall and we had a discussion of his title. He proudly exclaimed that that his book was being displayed in his “Publisher’s” booth. When I questioned that I didn’t realize that his publisher had a booth he replied,”The booth is out in the main hallway”. “How much did you pay to be included in your publisher’s booth?” I asked. “$400” was his reply. Whenever I think the vanity presses like Xlibris, IUniverse and AuthorHouse have sunk as low as they can possibly go, they drop to new depths. What this person was calling his publisher’s “Booth” was to pay double the cost that I was charging people to be on a bookshelf in the new title showcase. Then, to make matters infinitely worse, instead of New Title Showcase, the headers on the top of these bookcases had giant advertisements for Xlibris, IUniverse or one of the other vanity presses. This approach worked with book buyers much the way a cross works with a vampire. They didn’t go anywhere near any of those bookshelves. The people who were displayed in the non-vanity bookshelves benefited because the buyers walked right past the other shelves and went to the Independent Publisher shelves. As for the vanity presses…. I guess nothing they do surprises me anymore. It’s fairly disgusting. If they had rented a booth from the Expo people for the same $7000 that I did, manned the booth with publisher personnel, and charged the authors $400 to be a part of the booth, that’s one thing. Deceiving their authors into thinking they are exhibiting in a manned publisher booth, when in reality, they are just part of an unmanned publisher advertisement that they could have bought for half the price…. yet another. Whenever you thought you’ve seen it all… The sad part is watching these poor people flush money down the vanity press drain, especially in these hard economic times. Remember, if it’s too good to be true….. it is.

Last 5 posts by Ron Pramschufer

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