BookExpo: A Win-Win Experience
Librarians and publishers find mutual agendas at the U.S. book show
Francine Fialkoff, Editor -- Library Journal, 7/15/2003
"There's a different kind of energy here than at ALA [the American Library Association annual conference]," said Jo Ann Pinder, executive director of Gwinnett County PL, GA, who attended her first BookExpo this year. "ALA is about understanding the profession as a whole. But whatever else we do, our bread and butter is books," she said. "To be around that many books and people who love books reminded me why I got into the profession…and it made me excited about the profession."
Pinder's comments reflected the sentiments of many librarians who came to BookExpo. "It's hard to get a sense of the overall field of publishing and what's being published just by seeing books in catalogs or reading [review] journals," said SFPL's Lent. "There's something about being on the trade show floor. [It gave me] a visceral overview of the current state of publishing." Getting a grasp on what's out there isn't easy, given the number of titles published annually—150,000, according to Bowker's 2002 statistics released at BookExpo, 22,000 of which came from the top 12 trade houses and accounted for 95 percent of total unit and dollar sales.
Although Lent picked up catalogs and took copious notes on what books publishers were touting, "[BookExpo] is less about making a buying list and more about getting up on trends," she said. The lists will come, too, however, when she's back home. Among the trends Lent pointed to were "more paperback originals every year, more mainstream publishers moving into Spanish, and several audiobook publishers coming out with Spanish book lines, like Recorded Books." Moreover, said Lent, "I was much more impressed than I expected to be by the crop of upcoming titles" than in previous years, referring to "important 'idea' books" from writers like Molly Ivins (Bushwhacked, Random, Sept.) and Joan Didion (Where I Was From, Knopf, Sept.) for starters.
For Terry Jacobsen, a reference librarian and adult fiction selector at Santa Monica PL, CA, BookExpo validated the idea that "the book is not dead" and provided the venue to go beyond "our own little environments." It also made her think about "what is it that people are seeking and how do we make that more accessible to them." After attending one of the educational panels, she concluded the library's web site needed to be "one quick stop for books." Like her colleagues, Jacobsen reveled in the easy access to authors. "That's always a gift for a librarian, both personally and professionally," she said.
BookExpo also afforded collection development librarians from around the country a chance to network with other librarians who do the same kind of work. As Pinder pointed out, however, you don't have to be a book selector to be energized by the show. She isn't one but enthused, "BookExpo is about what we do." Next year she's not only going to send her selectors but a nonselector as well [to the show]. "I want them to have the opportunity to walk through the halls and find out about new trends and about the book industry, of which we're a large part," she said.
As much as publishers at BookExpo recognized that libraries and librarians are a "large part" of the book industry, we still need "to do more," said SFPL's Lent, "to be 'counted' by publishers as an important market." We need to reiterate to publishers the size of the library market.
LJ did some quick "counting" of its own to determine how much money those 750 librarians who attended BookExpo spend on books. We arrived at a total of $47,911,164—and that represents only the 32 libraries that have responded so far. Think how much money the hundreds of librarians who attend BookExpo represent. Then remind publishers that those are "final sales," since there are no returns. That should make for a winning relationship.
