My head is spinning and my feet and knees are aching after two days (so far) at BEA, Book Expo America, the annual show and party celebrating books and publishing. A brief interim report, to be fleshed out after this ends in another couple of days:
- Lots of e-publishers on hand - in fact, there's a new "Digital Zone" for e-book publishing and companies that service electronic publishers. But the digital publishing, really, is spread throughout the display floor.
- There are more than 1300 exhibitors on the floor this year - two dozen very long aisles (each a city block or two) jammed with every possible kind of book. The best mysteries, perhaps not surprisingly, are to be found at the table of the Mystery Writers of America, and a LOT of great writers are using that booth for autograph signings.
- I don't know how many thousand people are roaming the floor, but there are times when you can barely move through the crowds.
- Most interesting find so far: a small book by R. William Bennett called Jacob T. Marley. It contains the "backstory" of Marley - of Scrooge and Marley from Dickens's A Christmas Carol - and explains how and why Marley was able to come back to warn Ebenezer Scrooge to change his ways. As the blurb says, "Jacob T. Marley is to A Christmas Carol as the world-famous Wicked is to The Wizard of Oz. This should be fun to read - I'll try to do so pretty quickly and give you a report.
Much more, if I survive my return visit to the expo tomorrow. That's when I also get to go through the exhibitors set up for BlogWorld/NewMediaExpo, which is running concurrently with, and in cooperation with, BEA.
Comments