A Reading of Relief at Annual Book Show

May 31, 2013
A Reading of Relief at Annual Book Show
By JULIE BOSMAN


E-book sales are no longer growing at a nerve-rattling pace. The unpleasant and expensive price-fixing lawsuit last year, pitting the Justice Department against five major publishers, has been settled. Independent booksellers added 65 stores to their ranks in 2012, according to their trade association, despite competition from Amazon.

After a turbulent few years in the book business, there was a feeling at BookExpo America, the publishing industry’s annual trade convention that convened in New York this week, that the disruption might have calmed.

“I’m hearing this gigantic sigh of relief everywhere I go in B.E.A. this year,” Michael Pietsch, the newly installed chief executive of Hachette Book Group, said in a panel discussion. “We’re still here. People are no longer quite as anxious that the world is turning upside down.”

The event, which ends on Saturday, drew a crowd of 20,000 publishers, authors, agents, bookstore owners and librarians to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The trade show had barely opened on Wednesday when publishing executives who had trekked there began to roll their eyes at the center’s familiar annoyances.

“Good old Javits,” Reagan Arthur, the publisher of Little, Brown, wrote on Twitter. “Horrible sight lines, minimal Internet access and $4 Diet Cokes.”

But gentle mocking gave way to the usual enthusiasm that permeates the convention, an event whose original purpose was partly to give bookstores the chance to order books for the fall season. It has evolved into something equally old-fashioned: a huge gathering for the book industry to talk up titles, showcase high-profile authors and try to build elusive buzz for promising books.

This year, the lineup of celebrity authors included Chelsea Handler, there to promote “Uganda Be Kidding Me,” a travelogue; Helen Fielding, whose third Bridget Jones novel, “Mad About the Boy,” is scheduled for release in the fall; and Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” who has written a new novel, “The Signature of All Things,” her first in 13 years.

On the sprawling exhibit floor, publishers big and small rubbed elbows. Near Random House’s mammoth booth, the comparatively tiny Omnific Publishing promoted its titles with the slogan “Romance ... Without Rules.” Shadow Mountain, a Utah-based publishing company, advertised “The Romney Family Table,” by Ann Romney, a collection of stories and recipes offering “a peek inside Romney family life and the food that has become an essential part of those memories.”

HarperCollins, pumping up one of its new authors, sponsored a gargantuan hanging billboard advertising a book by Mitch Albom that will be released in the fall. In the autograph area on Friday, fans lined up to meet Rick Riordan, Cassandra Clare and Walter Dean Myers.

“When you work in a library, you constantly hear that print is dying, and then you come here and feel so much energy,” said Barbara Moralis, a librarian at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pa., as she waited in a long line to meet the author Andrew Gross. “Publishing is not dead.”

There were, in fact, several signs of health in an industry that has been buffeted by change in recent years.

Oren Teicher, the chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, said unit sales for independents increased nearly 8 percent in 2012. E-book sales, while still growing rapidly in the industry as a whole, have plateaued for some publishers. This provides more stability than the run-amok sales of previous years and gives publishers more clarity about consumers’ book-buying habits.

BookStats, a survey of the industry released last month, revealed that e-books now account for 20 percent of publishers’ revenues, up from 15 percent in 2011. “It seems like the growth rate of e-books has slowed,” said Carolyn Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster.

While there was the usual tut-tutting about Amazon — Becky Anderson, a co-owner of Anderson’s Bookshops, outside Chicago, referred to it as “the company that shall not be named” — there was also no booth on the exhibit floor from the New York-based unit of Amazon Publishing, which caused much fear and consternation in the industry when it was founded two years ago.

In a panel titled “Publishing, Bookselling and the Whole Damn Thing,” John Sargent, the chief executive of Macmillan, called Attorney General Eric Holder “incompetent,” a comment on the Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five publishing companies filed last year. Apple, the only remaining defendant, will go on trial in federal court next week.

But Mr. Sargent said the industry seemed to have stabilized. “I was much more pessimistic a year and a half ago than I was now,” he said.

The organizers have invited members of the public on Saturday, for the second year in a row, to a “Power Readers” program that is intended to help build word of mouth for books beyond the industry. This year the organizers of the event were expecting 2,000 outsiders, a significant increase over 2012, when 500 attended.

Authors, speaking to throngs of starry-eyed booksellers, did their best to rev up the crowds. At a breakfast attended by 1,000 on Thursday, Wally Lamb, the author of the forthcoming novel “We Are Water,” finished his remarks with a paean to booksellers.

“Writers and readers are two poles, apart from each other,” he said. “And you, ladies and gentlemen, are the electricity that connects us.”






Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/business/media/bookexpo-america-draws-20000-to-javits-center.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130601&_r=0