Today was the first official day of BEA. Navigating the aisles was treacherous as booksellers vied for galleys and freebies. The frustrating/funny thing about BEA is that many of the people that you want to talk to have more important people to snag, and the people who want to talk to you are those you’re trying desperately to avoid.
We met this morning with people from Picador, which publishes superb paperbacks (Marilynne Robison is one of their authors). They told us about a new collection of interviews from the Paris Review (our buyer Carole was really excited them), and they have three books they’re reissuing in conjunction with films debuting next fall: Zoe Heller’s What Was She Thinking: Notes from a Scandal, The Good German by Joseph Kanon (both of these movies star Cate Blanchett), and Augusten Burrough’s with Scissors. We’re excited to work some of these books into Harvard Book Store’s new book club program.

Before lunch, we strolled around and stopped by the McSweeney’s booth and talked to Andrew (from The Believer Magazine) and Eli from McSweeney’s. We chatted about the possibility of having some type of big event in the fall, since several of their authors are local. I’d love to do it, and hope they come through.

This afternoon, we met with people from Harvard, Yale and MIT University Presses. They always publish a lot of local authors, and this fall will be no exception. Highlights include Alan Wolfe, Jon Levenson, Jon Meada, Martin Nowak, Nancy Seasoles and Owen Gingerich. I was excited to see that they have a collection of poetry from Geoffrey Hill, a British poet that a lot of my friends have been raving about.

We also talked about how October is the 100th anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s birth. Her student and biographer, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, is coming out with a new book about her. We’re starting to think about how we can celebrate Arendt and her work with a display or some type of author event.

Tonight I’ll be attending a cocktail party with the LBC people before heading off to a dinner hosted by Walker Bloomsbury at the International Spy Museum. I’m a closet spy novel fan and I am incredibly excited.

More later!

Not a sexy post title, no, but Ed has written about yesterday’s events. Go here to get his opinion.

The Washington Convention Center is bustling this morning as publishers arrive to set up their booths, and booksellers take place in educational programs arranged through the American Booksellers Association. I spent an interesting hour listening to a panel on “Shop Local: Forming Business Alliances in your Community.” It’s a topic that we at Harvard Book Store are particularly interested in because of our involvement in Cambridge Local First, an organization of locally-owned Cambridge businesses trying to raise awareness in our community about the economic and social impact of spending money at independent businesses rather than chains.
The most persuasive speaker, from my perspective, was Stacy Mitchell, author of The Home Town Advantage and the forthcoming Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses, coming out this November from Beacon Press. I hope we can get her to come to Harvard Book Store — this is such an important issue in our community. Many people think that Cambridge is the last place that independents should have to worry, but Wordsworth’s closing in 2004 and the recent troubles of the Brattle Theatre were a big wake-up call. Overall, the panelists felt positive though, and I was reminded of how happy and excited we are about the Grolier’s and Globe Corner Bookshop’s recent reopenings.
Off to another panel!

Today was the educational day of BEA, where booksellers, publishers, and everyone else attend seminars on topics ranging from handselling books to getting the most out of your website. I sat through a lecture by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, called ‘Long Tail Prescriptions for the Book’. He argues that blockbuster movies, music, and books are being replaced with more people buying smaller numbers of things. It sounds obvious, but he maintains that people have the ability now to specialize their interests via Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes. There are a million songs on iTunes, but though none may reach blockbuster proportion, a person can be guaranteed to find something that actually fits their interests. Technology now allows people to specialize in effect.

The last panel of the day I attended was called ‘The Best American Fiction since 1980: From the New York Times Book Review Survey’. I’ve blogged about this before (or at least mentioned it). In my opinion, the New York Times picking one book out of so many to represent the “best” book seemed too arbitrary. Plus the group lacked women. The panel was composed of Tom Mallon, Liesl Schillinger, Cynthia Ozick, Sam Tanenhaus, and Greg Cowles (though he left halfway through). Tanenhaus seemed defensive from the beginning in my opinion, as if he felt he had to defend the whole enterprise. I thought Cynthia Ozick was amazing, as was Tom Mallon. And I have a new respect for Liesl Schillinger. My friend Ed Champion queried Tanenhaus but his response left something to be desired. Ed will have more on that later. All in all it was a good day of panels.

Tonight I went to the French Embassy for a cocktail party celebrating the Reading the World program, where I met many other booksellers and bloggers. We ate cheese, drank wine, and talked about the book world. Now I’m back at the hotel, ready to sleep and prepare for a new day.

From my colleague Amanda:
Hello from Book Expo America! I’m Amanda from Harvard
Book Store, and I’d like to thank my colleague
Bookdwarf for letting Harvard Book Store use her blog
to report on our booksellers’ experiences at Book Expo
America (BEA). Our goal is to let readers know about
the literary, publishing and bookselling news and what
we have to look forward to (bookwise) in the coming
months.

This is my fifth BEA. Last year’s conference was in
New York and a lot of publishing people who otherwise
might not have attended flooded the conference floor
and the dozens of dinners, parties and concerts that
occur every night. For many booksellers, this is the
only time each year when you get to meet publishers
face to face.

We suspect that this year’s conference will be a
little more low-key, but we’re ready and willing to be
surprised.