To BEA or not to BEA

by Jane

So, as we've already mentioned, last week was Book Expo, and it took place mid-week for the first time in its history (I believe) and was shortened from three and a half to two days of exhibits with an additional meeting day. The question this raises for me is how relevant is BEA anymore; is it necessary and will it continue?

Historically this annual meeting was known as the American Books Sellers Association (ABA) meeting. It began in the basement of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., and was held annually—initially over Memorial Day Weekend. The convention’s purpose was for book publishers to present their fall publishing lists to bookstore owners who would actually place their orders on the floor. Those in attendance from the publishing companies were mainly sales people with some executives making an appearance now and then; editors weren’t included.

Over the years, the ABA convention grew larger and larger. More and more publishers added more and more staff and they began to build larger and larger exhibits. The ABA outgrew the Shoreham and was moved to a convention center in Washington and then began traveling to a different city in different parts of the country each year.

The convention has been held everywhere in the continental U.S. from Chicago, to Los Angeles and Anaheim, to San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans and even Miami (I remember that ABA well—for many reasons, it was a disaster). And each year it grew, with publishers spending more and more money on their exhibits, and having hugely lavish parties to entertain booksellers, authors and agents.

Slowly but surely foreign publishers began to participate and the ABA became a rights fair as well, sort of a mini-Frankfurt (before the London Book Fair grew as large as it now is).

Then as the chains became all powerful and publishers took orders on fall books from these huge accounts before the ABA (or at least outside of the convention), that reason for the meeting became irrelevant. Smaller accounts also started to order less at the meeting and more in other ways and at other times.

Publishers began to realize that the enormous sums of money spent on exhibits, on parties and on travel could not be justified. Displays began to get smaller; some publishers skipped years coming and eventually the exhibit was sold to an organization that became Book Expo. Now, it is a truncated and less interesting event.

My question is what really happens at BEA nowadays? Sure, it is wonderful to see old friends, but the individual exhibits are so small now that one can’t even find the fall books one is looking for. Last week I saw very little activity at the parts of the convention occupied by foreign publishers and the exhibits were downsized from two floors to one in the Javits Center. Very little actual business in terms of the initial book ordering is done anymore and with the other rights fairs around the world, those sold at BEA for the most part are also insignificant.

As I wandered around the floor last week at BEA 2010, I honestly thought to myself that the money still being spent by publishers on this meeting could be much better allocated toward finding new and effective ways to sell books in an age when our business is changing enormously and very quickly.

I would love to know what those of you who have participated in BEA in the past think about all of this.

Galley tales

by Miriam

It’s BEA week (check this out for an overview of the conference if you’re not familiar with it) which means that some of us are at the Javitz Center checking out publishers’ exhibits, schmoozing with authors who are in from out of town, and loading up free tote bags with galleys of books that are already generating buzz.

For me, the point of BEA has always been collecting those galleys. Invariably, I find myself walking the huge expanse of the Javitz arena ridiculously bogged down by the weight of too many of these advanced readers copies only to realize when I leave the building that getting from 11th Avenue to civilization requires a very long walk to the nearest subway or an endless wait for a cab. No matter. It’s still a thrill to read something in this vulnerable, unfinished format (complete with typos and mostly exaggerated promotional information on the back cover) and then watch the published book race up the bestseller lists, win a huge prize, or both.

I just came across this old piece from New York magazine and was delighted to see how many of those galleys I’d picked up at the 2007 BEA went on to gaudy sales and great acclaim.

Are any of you attending BEA this year? What galleys are you walking away with?

Books DO make you smarter!

by Chasya

Book Expo America kicked off today, and while the show floor won’t open until tomorrow there is already a lot of talk underway about a topic that will dominate discussions this year -- digital publishing. This brings me to news I stumbled on at Moby Lives, of a new scientific study published in the Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, which shows that simply having books at home increases the level of education a child will attain. The 20-year study also concludes that the outcome of a child's education level and how far they advance will be affected twice as much by having books at home than by their father’s education level, which is also a determining factor here.

This sort of thinking makes sense to me. Just being surrounded by books can make them tantalizing enough for you to reach out to discover what lies within them on your own. Having them constantly present can instill in a person that reading and literature is significant and worthwhile.

Heading into the digital age of books I wonder how this will affect young people should electronic readers become the dominant medium. If they are not surrounded by books will they think of them in a different way? With so much else to distract them (I’m looking at you World of Warcraft), will they think of books much if they’re not physically there? What say you, readers?

Happy BEA!

by Lauren

By the time this posts, I'll already be at the DGLM table in the International Rights Center at the Jacob Javits Center, doing my duty at Book Expo America as the agency's subsidiary rights director. Today is the beginning of American publishing's largest trade show and, for me, a three-day extravaganza of back-to-back meetings with foreign publishers, sub-agents, scouts, audio editors, and film producers. I’ll leave it to one of my colleagues to give you the BEA scoop in another post, but in the meantime, I thought it might be a good time to talk subrights.

I offered a basic rundown of how subrights works a couple years ago, but maybe now would be a good time to talk in more depth. Since foreign rights take up the bulk of my time—and will account for most of my meetings this week—why don’t we start there? If you’d like to know more about audio, film, and serial, just let me know below, and I’ll tackle them in future posts.

Foreign is the biggest rights market. When a book sells to an American publisher, there are more or less three options: North American, world English, or world. Occasionally a book sells separately to Canada and the US, but that’s not the norm unless the author is Canadian, and even then, it really depends on the type of book.

In a North American rights deal, the American publisher will distribute their edition in English in the US, Canada, the US territories, and the open market. The open market is the term for those territories where English-language rights are fair game. American and British publishers have essentially carved up the world into three sections: US exclusive territories; UK & Commonwealth exclusive territories; and everywhere else. Occasionally, there’s a land grab from one side or the other insisting that they must have exclusive rights to a particular place (BEA 2006 featured a panel on the whole kerfuffle). I’ve seen British publishers insist that they should get Europe exclusively because they’re…nearby? And I’ve seen US publishers insist that India’s not in the British Commonwealth. The part of it that always perplexes me is that the major players on both sides are generally owned by the same parent companies. The open market is the territories in which both the US and the UK publishers are allowed to sell. In the end, all that matters from the authors’ and agents’ perspectives is that the publishers’ dispute doesn’t prevent a sale to both territories and that the book is widely available. The notion that an island nation that no one involved could pick out on a map is a deal breaker is really quite silly. Fortunately, it usually works out.

In a world English deal, this is blessedly not our problem, though unfortunately we also lose the chance to do a separate deal in the UK. This typically means that the US publisher has a UK arm that they feel will publish or distribute the book well. All non-English rights, though, are controlled by the author, which means that we’re trying to place those where possible.

In a world rights deal, it’s all—English and every other language—in the publisher’s hands.
The way that foreign rights deals are typically done is through a network of subagents in the major territories throughout the world. In countries like the UK, Germany, Japan, etc., there are agencies that represent American publishers and agents, and those are the people I work most closely with on foreign rights deals. Our subagents represent the full list of rights that we represent on behalf of our authors in their territories, though of course not all books will sell in all countries.

Sometimes, books don’t sell internationally at all—it’s often said that such books “don’t travel.” Books that depend largely on pre-existing interest in the author or subject, for example, are less likely to sell internationally if that pre-existing interest isn’t also international. A novel by a small publisher in the US is more likely to sell than a bestselling American cookbook by a celebrity chef who is not on TV outside the US market. This is one of the things I love most about foreign rights: the rules are totally different and sometimes the little guy in the US market gets to be a bigshot elsewhere. As part of that, there’s a lot of information to manage: true crime sometimes sells in Australia, Germany and Japan, but rarely elsewhere unless the case has international reach; memoirs are tough in Spain; and you can’t typically sell to a foreign country those things that they feel they do better than the US. For example, literary fiction is tough to sell in France, but commercial novels are easier. (The French don’t exactly clamor for American attempts at high culture.) Horror’s tough to sell in Asia, because their standards for what’s frightening are quite different than the American one: think of The Ring as compared to an American slasher flick.

I really love these little glimpses into foreign cultures, and it’s always really satisfying when I choose a book to highlight for a particular subagent or publisher and get a sale. And it’s a huge pleasure to work directly with clients of the agency who aren’t my own, some of whom I’ll be lucky enough to see for a bit at the fair!

Any questions?

Getting ready for BEA

by Stacey

I know it's a little ways away still, but I've been starting to see some marketing materials for this year's BEA, taking place in NYC May 25-27. The website gives a lot of great information about the event, and they recently announced that they are trying to broaden the appeal and turn it into an entire New York Book Week May 24 through May 28. This is very cool, and offers not only authors, publishers, agents and the entire publishing community a chance to come together, but it also gives regular New Yorkers the opportunity to get involved and come out to join in the fun. Many venues are taking part, and people will be able to visit places all over the city for events, including bookstores, the 92nd Street Y, and the NY Public Library. If you'll be in town, take a look at some of the great programs they are planning and put them in your calendar now so you can come out and support the book biz.