Trade Shows, Authors, and Expectations
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | June 19, 2015 |
Image: Provided by Frankfurt Buchmesse (coming 14-18 October 2015), photographer Bernd Hartung
What If We’re Asking Too Much of Our Book Fairs?
Jael McHenry
When our good colleague Jael McHenry wrote What You Would Have Learned at BEA earlier this month, she did a fine job of listing some of the common views and assumptions among many writers about the industry’s major trade shows. Excerpting here:
If you’re an aspiring author, there’s pretty much no reason to go…If you’ve ever needed a physical representation of what it’s like to be a reader, this is it — rows and rows, tables and tables, yards and yards (that feel like miles) of books…Publishers place their bets. You can preview half of next year’s bestseller lists by looking at the BEA posters and displays.
I’m going to cordially disagree with McHenry on all this.
Most easily: What writer worth her or his pixels doesn’t need a good representation of what it’s like to be a reader?
[pullquote]In the UK, in 2012, there were more books published than there were in the 18th century, the 19th century, and the first half of the 20th century combined. –Samira Ahmed, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row[/pullquote]
Let’s put some background into place, and then I will argue the following:
- It is important for an aspiring author to see a trade show (if it can be done without too much expense and inconvenience) because our commercialized world of arts and letters is encapsulated at these massive transactional events.
- There is a chance for our trade shows to shift their own author-responsive focus from an admirable but perhaps less practical focus on independent writers to something that serves the needs of traditional authors (who come to the shows already) in terms of marketing skills that indies wield more frequently.
Now, let’s look at these events for some background.
BEA proper was followed this year by a two-day BookCon that drew a total 18,000 fans of books (readers!) to the Javits Center. Image: Porter Anderson
Trading in Trade Shows
There are three major trade shows for Western publishing:
- London Book Fair (#LBF15) in April;
- BookExpo America (#BEA15) in May, next year in Chicago, not New York; and
- Frankfurt Book Fair (#FBM15), this year 14-19 October. The M in that hashtag is not a typo: it’s Frankfurt Buchmesse.
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
I know these operations well. Porter Anderson Media is a Media Partner with LBF and I enjoy my contact with that staff annually. At BEA, I programmed the show’s Author Hub last year, and this year I was program director for the International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF) Digital Book Conference that opened the trade show. At Frankfurt, I’m very pleased to program special events in the Business Club facility. (If you’ll be in Frankfurt this year, do ask me about the Business Club, it’s terrific.)
Each of these three big shows is quite distinctive in its approach to independent authors.
- About three years ago, London Book Fair, under Jacks Thomas’ direction, led the way in creating activities for independent authors at London Book Fair. Its AuthorLounge, originally programmed by Authoright, was the first of these majors to lay on a complex, busy round of panels and programs for authors. Now called Author HQ, the program is still up and running, quite robust. It stands as primarily a lecture- and meeting-area, busily programmed. It made the move with the rest of the trade show to the Olympia London facility this past April.
[pullquote]I walk the convention floor for impromptu meetings, greeting and bumping into publishing buddies. I snag catalogs of interest and the occasional galley giveaway. I stop at booth signings by our clients. It’s all about face-to-face connections. Nothing will ever completely replace that. — Donald Maass[/pullquote]
- At BookExpo in New York, Reed Exhibitions’ Steve Rosato followed up, working diligently to produce Author Hub. This year called Author Marketplace, the offering for independent authors was again a chance to have a table of your own for the life of the show (five days this year — it included BookCon) as a place for meetings, a base of operation, and a showcase area of your own on the trade-show floor. The proposition is quite different at BEA from what it is at LBF. At LBF, the author arrives and sees panels and presentations about various aspects of craft and business, all for the price of admission to the floor, about £30 or $47.50. At BEA, the author who wants a place in Author Marketplace pays, and quite substantially, for the table: $1,720, which included a BEA Author Autographing Session. There has been a one-day self-publishing conference at BEA, as well, called uPublishU.
- Frankfurt’s approach, under the good work of Juergen Boos, Holger Volland, Thomas Minkus and many others, so far has been primarily conference-oriented (this year, the good Michelle Turnbach is working on it), with a line of events for German-speaking authors and, last year, an afternoon’s half-day conference for English-speaking authors put together by Authoright — I assisted in programming and moderating some of that English-language afternoon, which had a fine turnout. There was also a good series of sessions on the Saturday developed by our friends Edward Nawotka, Hannah Johnson and others at Publishing Perspectives’ stage. Plans for this coming October are still in the works.
Each of these major trade shows has, in recent years, tried to accommodate at least some of the interests and needs of independent authors.
I’m stressing independent authors because traditionally published authors, a whole lot of them, have always been at these shows. At BEA alone, more than 600 traditionally published authors were engaged in various activities this year — autographing, speaking, answering questions.
From left, BEA’s Steve Rosato, LBF’s Jacks Thomas, FBM’s Juergen Boos
To what purpose? The publishing trade show is an event designed to have publishers advertise their upcoming releases to booksellers and influencers. Like buyers at major outlets, the mom and pop who own that bookshop you loved as a kid in Minnetonka might fly to New York and roam the huge floor at BEA in order to get copies of upcoming books they might order for the bookshop back home. So will the operators of major book clubs and other outfits that move large numbers of books, influence their sales, blog about their excitement. And the industry wants them to see the upcoming wares.
Those influential people like meeting authors, getting their autographs. This is the core mission of the trade show: get the traditionalist publishers and the traditionalist booksellers / book-mongers / book-talkers / book mavens (to use our friend Bethanne Patrick’s moniker) to come together. Oh, yes, and press people, too: it can be useful to have someone who writes in the press about books to meet an author, grab a copy, get the background, right? Most fundamentally, booksellers are ordering books for their stores. Publishers are taking orders. Business is at hand.
BEA’s categories for attendance include:
- Bookstores;
- Retailers;
- Librarians;
- Educators;
- American Bookseller Association members;
- Digital service providers;
- Literary and rights agents;
- Authors;
- Publishing (house) personnel;
- Non-editorial media members (cable TV programmers, for example);
- Publishing consultants (my Porter Anderson Media is such a company);
- Book-related non-profits;
- Film and television people;
- Book club operators;
- “Friends, family and children” approved to accompany accredited attendees.
A much wider net than you might have imagined, right?
As McHenry put it, “Publishers place their bets. You can preview half of next year’s bestseller lists by looking at the BEA posters and displays.”
That’s exactly the idea and the purpose of the trade show.
The southern end of the BookExpo America 2015 (BEA) exhibition hall at the Javits Center. Image: Porter Anderson
Don’t Cross It Off Your List Just Yet
Now, let’s go back to McHenry’s wider points, which largely add up to her line “Aren’t you glad you didn’t go (to BEA)? Cross it off your list.”
I say not so fast. McHenry cites agent Janet Reid telling writers that trade shows are not the place to pitch literary agents. This is absolutely correct.
Agents are there to meet not with authors but with — as our colleague, the author and literary agent Don Maass, writes in a comment to McHenry — “audio publishers, foreign scouts and publishers, L.A. agents and producers.” This is all happening in the International Rights Center (IRC). Each trade show devotes a serious amount of space to its IRC. And, as Don mentions, in-person contact with your fellow publishing players is a key here:
I also walk the convention floor for impromptu meetings, greeting and bumping into publishing buddies. I snag catalogs of interest and the occasional galley giveaway. I stop at booth signings by our clients. It’s all about face-to-face connections. Nothing will ever completely replace that.
Even my journo associate Gayle Feldman and I, when dividing up coverage assignments for The Bookseller and The FutureBook in London, allow each other time to “work the floor.” I can walk from the 34th Street end of the Javits Center in New York northward across the trade-show exhibition hall and be stopped 25 times by encounters with folks I know. This is important contact.
[pullquote]There are some terrifically talented and dedicated people working in traditional publishing and they know precisely what works. It may not, however, be the same thing that works for independent authors.[/pullquote]
And what all this comes down to is that a publishing trade show is not something I’m convinced that authors should dismiss out of hand. Do you want to pay $1,720 for a five-day table on the floor? Maybe not. That might not be the way your career is running at this point. But is it worth going in for a day to see the industry gathered in one massive spot doing its business? I believe it is.
Normally the price of basic entry is not steep. One of the smartest self-publishing authors I know is Victoria Noe, of the Friend Grief series of nonfiction books. She’s at BEA every year, talking up her work, meeting vendors in a totally professional way, learning the business, putting a friendly, competent face to the “self-published” label for industry folks.
When McHenry talks of a trade show being dauntingly big, she’s not wrong. But that’s another reason I’d like to see more authors there. I don’t think many writers understand much of what I and other commentators are telling them about historically unprecedented levels of competition.
Walk into one of these trade shows and you understand much better what’s going on in the world of “visible books,” alone — before you add in the hundreds of thousands of annual titles that we can’t “see” because they carry no industry identifiers.
The Bookseller’s Philip Jones and I spent last week looking at questions of how big the self-publishing sector of the industry is today.
London Book Fair 2015 in its sunlit Olympia London setting. Image: Porter Anderson
Touring the Plantation
Next year, BEA moves to Chicago, 11-13 May. If some Writer Unboxed folks would like to have a look (indie or trad), I’ll see if I can arrange a chance with our friend Rosato and his administration to walk a group through and show you what’s going on in various sectors of the show. This year, Rosato had a delegation of more than 500 publishing people from China. Tours were part of their agenda, too. (I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and interviewing Feng Tang, a terrific novelist just starting to be translated to English by AmazonCrossing.)
I’m not persuaded that our well-intentioned efforts to create meaningful events for independent authors at these things have come together well yet, and that’s through no one’s fault. I’ve seen these show administrations work with genuine commitment to try to find viable approaches to answer the needs of indies in these settings. But what if we’re asking these massive shows and their hardworking leadership — Thomas, Rosato, Boos, et al — to do way too much? What if they’re being asked to meet the author corps far more than halfway?
There isn’t an easy fit for the non-aligned author at a trade show, McHenry is right, because the settings and goals of the shows were never designed to accommodate that role. Big rounds of routine craft and business classes for writers are available in many other places, certainly at writing conferences, year ’round. Asking trade shows to mount the same such programming might not be making as much sense as we (myself included) originally thought it would.
But perhaps something that explores the sheer scale of the industry in an inclusive way could be more valuable for all parties. That might be the kind of guided tour I’m talking about. It might be something else. Reflecting the interest that our Writer Unboxed colleague Jane Friedman has written about among independent writers who want traditional contracts, it hardly makes sense to assume that there’s nothing for an indie to learn at a trade show: that’s the very industry that Friedman’s writer has in mind.
I liked how Samira Ahmed on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row described it recently: In the UK in 2012, just that one year, she said, there were more books published than there were in the 18th century, the 19th century, and the first half of the 20th century combined. Think about that. I believe that we all need to find ways to better understand the avalanche of content here, not to feel overwhelmed but to help us learn to start navigating it.
In Frankfurt Book Fair’s International Halle. Image: Porter Anderson
A Trade Show Buddy System: Let’s Explore It
I’ve argued for years for a buddy system in which an independent author and a traditional publishing worker (not necessarily an author; how about a sales person, a good business head?) are teamed up to spend a day or half-day together at a trade show, learning from each other, talking, having lunch together — more importantly having a Campari together! — all while in the center of the industry’s commerce, every facet of the biz close at hand to examine, assess together, trade viewpoints.
[pullquote]We somehow may have fallen into a kind of egalitarian fever that says that all things must be good for all parts of the business. Are we asking too much?[/pullquote]
I’m not sure our expectations of these shows have been right. Would we ask a Buddhist temple to suddenly provide meaningful services for Christians? Probably not. Would we then say to these two great faiths, “just cross each other off your lists”? I hope not.
I’d like to explore this whole question of expectations more thoroughly. What if the best thing we could do at a trade show is offer special social-media training to traditionally published authors, the ones who are brought in by their publishers?
I found myself in a #FutureChat session for The FutureBook last week (11 a.m. Eastern each Friday), saying that there are some terrifically talented and dedicated people working in traditional publishing and that they know precisely what works. And it may not be the same thing that works for independent authors.
Isn’t that okay? That doesn’t nullify the value of what the traditionalists or the independents are doing. It may just mean that publishing and its needs are different for these sectors and that we somehow may have fallen into a kind of egalitarian fever that says that all things must be good for all parts of the business.
Are we asking too much of these shows?
My provocations for you today are three:
- Why do we tend to expect everything in publishing to be good for everyone?
- Why is it not okay for a trade show to serve one sector and not all sectors?
- Why wouldn’t anyone involved in books not want to have a look at the business’ largest, most ambitious gatherings?
Writer Unboxed co-founder and editor-in-chief Therese Walsh has been concerned for some time that the site doesn’t provide payment to its regular contributors. While it’s an ongoing debate in the industry! the industry!, the going wisdom is that writing professionals need to be paid something for their services, and Walsh graciously has been working to sort out something for our regular voices here. She’s trying out — with my appreciation — this new contribute-what-you-like approach here. I applaud her generous effort and the Writer Unboxed community’s warm welcome to those of us who are regular contributors.
[coffee]
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
Porter, you make such a smart suggestion — go for a day and with a buddy! I’ve never been to a biggie like BEA but you bet it’s on my radar when the time is right. However, sometimes money is better spent on a smaller and more intimate with a chance to make meaningful connections, esp. for an indie author. For instance, my books sell primarily to the school/library market and going to a book fair put on by the state library associations makes more sense than BEA. As always, I appreciate your well crafted provocations.
Thanks, Vijaya,
Always appreciate your reading, and your good thinking on your own situation. It’s great that you have the library connection, and you’re right that being exposed to that system’s events is important. It’s one of the reasons I’m excited about the Library SELF-E project I’m working with for independent authors who don’t have other avenues into libraries. (Their site is here, in case you’re not familiar with this program from Library Journal. https://bit.ly/1Lk5VsV)
I think I’d just note that sometimes not going to the most logical or tried-and-true venue is important. And as well as Jael paints it in her post, the scope and scale of the business are so much bigger than you can imagine unless you expose yourself to some of the biggest events going — which are these trade shows. So keep it in mind for some day. And perhaps we’ll develop a buddy system along the way to bring authors and publishing-house workers together in these settings.
Thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I think you make a lot of great points about BEA and other book conventions.
I am a little confused at how you are disagreeing with McHenry, though? It seems if we are only focusing on her first point, then your two posts are in full agreement. When she says, “aren’t you glad you didn’t go”, she is referring to not-yet-published authors, which makes sense.
Looking at your questions, I am attracted to the first, “Why do we tend to expect everything in publishing to be good for everyone?” We do seem to live in a “everyone deserves everything” society these days, so I agree – BEA and others don’t have to be for the indie/self-published. On the other hand, it’s very difficult for indie/self-published authors to gain traction in any book con, even smaller ones, I think, so that buddy system is an interesting concept.
Right on the buddy system, Janet, you follow me well there.
And sorry if I confused you on Jael’s point. I’m actually disagreeing with her that authors (even as-yet-unpublished ones) shouldn’t see a trade show in action if they can get to one. I think everybody working their way into a publishing career — and at whatever stage they find themselves — needs to taek advantage of these things when they can, to get a sense of just how big the industry really is.
In my experience a lack of higher perspective is one of the most crippling challenges many writers have. They simply have no concept of what they’re facing in the marketplace. Seeing the breadth of that marketplace, close up, first-hand, I find is really the only way to start understanding the challenges and potentials out there. This is why I think its important to get to one of these at some point, and “take it off your list,” as Jael suggests, seems not to be the right idea to me. I want it on your list until you can have this experience.
Make more sense?
Thanks again
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, these physical trade shows seem like relics of a past era, when face-to-face was the only way deals were made and orders placed. But fewer and fewer “mom and pop” stores can justify the expense of traveling to a big city to walk a floor and place book orders they can click through at home. As for authors seeking contracts and contacts, Janet Reid’s words do appear apt.
For the traditional industrialists, like Agent Don Maass, an expo is certainly a good place to meet and greet and maybe wheel and deal. But I have a hard time seeing the ROI for independent writers. It’s dicey ROI even for the writer hoping for a traditional deal, but if one has discretionary income and wants to see what all the hubbub is, I suppose it can be like an expensive field trip.
James–
As is invariably the case, what you say here makes great sense. As you suggest, it may be that trade shows are mostly about nostalgia, a sepia-tinted event from the good old days of publishing. Plus, it occasions an opportunity to get out of the office. It’s something for loyal employees to look forward to, however little ROI it may deliver.
Wouldn’t write them off yet, old boy. :)
More below in my reply to Jim.
-p.
Hey, Jim,
Thanks for the input.
If “these physical trade shows seem like relics of a past era,” as you write, I might point out that so do these physical books. :)
I agree with you about face-to-face, and I agree with Janet Reid when she says that conferences can be the better place for many writers to get what they need.
Someone, however, is going to these trade shows, it’s too early to say that they’ve seen their day (although lots of people love saying this every year — they’ve been on their last legs for a couple of decades to hear the wags carry on, lol).
While many of us felt that BEA looked smaller this year, the figures that Steve Rosato has released show that the turnout was not much changed over the previous year:
2015:
Total Verified Professional Attendance for BEA 2015: 10,832 = -1.2%
Total Industry Professionals 2015 = 20,895 = +5.2%
2014:
Total Verified Professional Attendance for BEA 2014: 10,965
Total Industry Professionals 2014 = 19,860
In light of your comment, I’ve gone back into the post and listed the categories of badges that BEA offers — there are far, far more layers of industry involved than the mom and pop booksellers, and I think my original write had made that hard to understand.
In addition to the figures you see above, let me remind you that BEA — as Frankfurt has been doing for years — is getting better and better at drawing the public readership into the mix, too.
Last year, BEA’s BookCon had 10,000 ticketholders for one day.
This year, 18,000 ticketholders for two days.
And those are readers. And with Lance Fensterman’s team doing the programming from ReedPOP (here’s an article about this: https://tcat.tc/1EYcOYj ), this has become an intriguing and viable fanbase-draw in an industry that can surely use some audience.
So that, too, I think gives us something more than a relic of the past — under proper programming, it appears that the “relic” can be leveraged as a very contemporary lure to folks paying some $40 on the average to get close to book-related events and personalities.
I also think that if you’ll read me carefully you’ll see that I’m agreeing with you that independent authors may not find “the ROI” that some of us might have hoped could be there.
That “expensive field trip” might not be something we can ask these trade shows to make as worthwhile as we’d wish. (And I have been part of this effort and remain very willing to continue as such, in consultation with these good folks running these events.) What I’m arguing is that there may, in fact, be a better author-cultivation play for the shows in terms of responding to the potential for *trad-author* training.
Many traditional houses are looking to help their authors learn some of the independent world’s community-building techniques. Since many trad authors already ARE headed to trade shows for their autograph sessions and other events, maybe it’s that sector of authors the shows could address with more parallel benefit than indies.
All to be played out, all to be discussed, nothing known for sure…what fun.
Thanks, as ever, for your good input. I’m off to read a relic given to me for my birthday. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Vijaya, makes a good point. We indie and self-pubbed authors have limited funds for conventions and book fairs; targeted venues are a smart approach.
The BEA in NYC this year was $209 for one day pass for an “author” ticket, plus travel, food, hotel, etc. I went to the Miami International Book Fair (I happened to be there for other reasons), the entrance fee was $8.00. Now that’s reasonable. I found it fun and social and a bit overwhelming and I’m sure it wasn’t as big as the BEA–even though Miami Book Fair had over 250 vendors, all the big publishing houses, lit agents, booksellers everywhere, and over 400 author events. It was worth the entrance fee for the 6 hours I spent there, but I did not make any significant connections as an indie author; I did get a look-see about the scope of the book industry. Certainly a cost effective $8.00.
Glad you felt you got your $8 worth, Paula.
The Miami Book Fair is great for what it does but it is, as you surmise, a very different affair. It’s an exhibition, a public-facing event, primarily.
BEA is not. It’s a trade show, an industry-facing event (not open to the public) and has many purposes and activities not encompassed in a show like the Miami one.
There IS an open-to-the-public element to BEA and that’s called BookCon. This year it was held on the Saturday and Sunday of the week and drew 18,000 ticketholders, average ticket price $40.
It’s all a matter of perspective and will be different for each person. To me, $209 sounds like a very reasonable amount for something of the magnitude of BEA, and for others it will seem exorbitant. To still others it might seem incredibly inexpensive, an absolute steal. Not all independent authors are tightly budget-constrained. And many traditionally publishing authors are working with very little discretionary income.
The range of what looks like a “good” or “bad” price is all over the map in something as widely distributed as the author corps today, so drawing one line or another at where a ticket price is “right” is an extremely difficult thing to do.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I have never been to one of the big three expos, but have gone to the ALA and the TLA (Texas Library Association) expos, and found them fun and helpful. We do need to know the business side of this wacky writing world. :-)
Thanks for this helpful article.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Maryann.
Looking forward to news coming out of the ALA in San Francisco at the end of the month.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter,
As you know, I tried to get to my first trade show (London) this year and got sidelined. I’m over the moon about BEA 2016 being in Chicago! And if you’ll accept indie authors on your walk-through, I’d like to get on that list.
I’m at the point where the traditional style of writers’ conference is beginning to pall. Not a whole lot there that I can’t learn online or from reading good craft books, and since I’m not interested in pitching to agents or editors I’m starting to feel I’m not getting value for the (very high) cost of conference + hotel + travel.
I don’t want to go to events aimed at self-publishers either, for fear that they’ll mostly cater to newbies and be crammed with author service providers trying to get our email addresses. I’m way past all that.
So trade shows are starting to look attractive as an alternative investment of my money. They promise the presence of the top self-publishers I’d like to meet, the latest news and releases for my genre, and (I hope) some education about selling rights, an area I still need to study. I’m hoping to team up with some other indies there in some sort of joint showcasing effort. Sure, I could save my money and network via the internet, but I find I get a lot out of real-life interaction with publishing folks.
And yes, I also just want to “have a look at the business’s largest, most ambitious gatherings!” After all, I have a lot in common with the publishers–I am one.
Hey, Jane,
Yes, indeed, I remember you valiantly trying to join us at Olympia in April for LBF, and indies will be totally welcome on a walk-through of BEA in Chicago, by all means, any author who wants to come along is most welcome. These shows are incredible for all they pack into these spaces, alone, never mind all that’s going on in them simultaneously.
Two words: sensible shoes. :)
And I do hear you on the question of what traditional writing conferences offer. There’s a point at which a certain level of accomplishment like yours makes these settings challenging because most of them need to serve a very wide range of experience in order to draw large enough crowds. If anything, it’s probably time for those of us involved in programming some of them to think of specific events or tracks to handle various levels of need and capability.
You are indeed past the newbie-self-publisher stage, too, long since, and, as I’ve been writing in some instances, the onslaught of the author-service forces in some of these situations is becoming problematic. (Don’t let me say they’re cropping up like toadstools, OK? The fallout from that simile went on for weeks, lol.)
A number of our indie bestsellers have had real good experiences in taking booths together at LBF and BEA in particular, and I do think there’s more to be tested in that model. Some of our Author Hub participants at BEA reported extremely good experiences, too. (Too early this year yet to have input reported on the Author Marketplace followup.)
Obviously, I still think there’s a lot for authors to learn and gain in the trade show setting, though I’m not sure that asking the shows to lay on programming for indies is as productive as we’d all hoped.
You are, indeed, a publisher, and getting a handle on the scope and scale of the industry is one of the smartest things I think you can do. I hope that others can find the same interest you have in the wider legacy and range of the business. To me, a break with what’s gone before isn’t what even the most entrepreneurial of authors needs, although many do seem to think that’s the idea.
Good thinking you’re doing and we’ll keep talking as we look forward to Chicago.
Thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hello Porter,
Being a pro, you know that the writer’s pertinent always comes first. I mean the lead. That’s why it’s interesting to me how your rant about adman usage infecting the language (one that definitely fires up the teacher crazy in me) comes first, before the main event. You have spoken for everyone who remembers why George Orwell was and remains a great man, and I thank you.
I’m afraid, though, that many writers live with children. To be included in their text-messaging shortlist, linguistic gooey is required. But then you are a great Tweeter, and what would Orwell say about that? Or about the majority of readers of YA fiction being adults?
As for writers attending shows at which the booths stretch off in misty perspective, so far as to leave one zip code for another, I don’t see why they would. Maybe just for the vibe of it all.
“I don’t think many writers understand much of what I and other commentators are telling them about historically unprecedented levels of competition.” Porter, are you sure that knowing more on this subject would serve writers’ efforts to forge ahead with their projects? I’m not.
But I certainly agree with you, when you suggest that it’s unreasonable to expect events designed for and by commercial publishing to accommodate independent writer/publishers. Why would they? What needs to happen–how I have no idea–is for indie publishing to find a way to organize its own trade shows. That would definitely light up my happy. But I don’t see it happening any time soon–unless sources of wise counsel such as yourself tell me otherwise.
Hey, Barry,
As for your point regarding the trade shows, I think I’ll collegially disagree. All writers, I think, should be aware of the world of arts and letters around them and should have some interest in that world. Much of our culture of arts and letters (like much of many cultures in the United States) is tightly bound into commercial activity. And in our case of publishing, that commercial activity is brought to a boiling intensity at a trade show. The show thus creates a perfect caldron in which a writer can see and begin to understand the structured exchanges and transactions occurring on a daily basis in the contest of the industry.
Our literary heritage may not be something that serves everyone today, but there is history and energy and real importance there. And in the same way that a young priest with no knowledge of his church’s past is crippled in his ability to mine its resources for his parishioners, an author with no ties to the great legacy of literature and its business is operating a vegetable stand, not a writing studio.
I like vegetable stands run by people who at least have noticed the vast cultivated plains of wheat around them. I don’t trust the vegetable stands run by people who have never seen a plantation and take no opportunities to look at a great farming enterprise when the chances arise.
What I’m saying, however, if you read carefully, is that I don’t think that our trade shows necessarily need to spend so much energy on servicing the independent writers — the owners of the vegetable stands — beyond being as available and as explanatory to them as possible. Instead, I’m interested in seeing us try to serve the traditionalist authors who are coming to the shows, as is. Just as many publishers are working to offer new marketing and developmental skills to trad authors, I think there may be a natural role for the trade shows in that element, as yet unexplored.
Thanks again for your input on that.
As for the first part of your comment: In a peculiar turn of events (not of your making), you’re talking about a part of today’s column that disappeared shortly after I published it. I took it out, myself, by the way, and voluntarily, no censorship has befallen WU.
As you’ll recall, I’d mentioned a recent guest piece here at WU as using particularly silly adman-speak, and it was pointed out that (although I hadn’t named the guest or said when the piece had run), the guest might feel bad if she or he saw my comments. As a 30+ year critic, I have far less concern for the mild discomfort of good criticism than some, but I can easily save this line of comment for another time and divorce it from a reference to a specific piece.
You seem to have caught the early version before I removed that section. So we’ll revisit the issue in the future.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter-
I so understand the need for coffee. Sooo understand. I bought you a cup.
To me, the need for aspiring or indie authors to spend to attend a trade show like BEA is less clear, though.
Then again, is there any real need to visit the Vatican, the Boat Show, design expos or MoMa? I am not Catholic. I’m not in the market for a yacht. My budget for interior design hovers around Ikea. I enjoy modern art but more than high end woodcraft, ceramics or a rock concert?
No, there’s no real need for those things but would anyone say I shouldn’t experience them? I have and will continue to do so because they broaden my outlook, make me think and inspire me.
So, yeah, in the end I think I agree with you. Everyone should visit the Vatican–and BEA–at least once, if only to have seen it and, hopefully, grow in ways that you can’t measure as ROI.
Now, Porter, did you know there is an annual event in at the Brooklyn Exposition Center called the Coffee and Tea Festival? It’s usually in May. If you are around next year, I’ll go with you. That is a definite need, wouldn’t you say?
Don!
Huge thanks for the cup of coffee! Isn’t Therese Walsh the best? She created that to test on my post today to see how it would go. And she tried to the last minute to get it turned into a glass of Campari (which you know I start each day with, LOL). But as I assured her, coffee is my next fave bev of choice and I’m thrilled. She’s concerned about regular contributors not having any remuneration from our posts here — so generous of her — and she came up with this cool idea to test. Needless to say, I’m a willing guinea pig. :)
I think you’re catching the spirit in which I’m talking of independent authors experiencing BEA (or LBF or FBM), too. My main concern is that I meet so many of our good indie folks who have so little concept of the industry and its processes — even the processes that are based in traditions needing updates, like parts of our trade shows. I don’t think this is smart, although I don’t mean to criticize anyone. I think what’s happening is that without taking the time to learn more about the industry they want to dismiss, a lot of indies don’t give themselves any connection with the heritage and background of the business. So much anti-trad rhetoric has saturated the community that they don’t realize there are things to be learned from decades and decades of experience and expertise. Do they need to move in and live there? Nope. As you say, once might just do it. But to reject an industry you’ve never even seen operate at one of its peak-performance events seems unwise to me. If I wanted to open a seafood restaurant, wouldn’t it make sense to find out about the industry of existing seafood restaurants? That’s how I see it. (I’m hungry, can you tell?)
On the flip side, I do think there’s something for the trade shows to think about in terms of addressing the traditionally publishing authors who ARE headed for a trade show for signings and things. Why not step up with an emphasis on services to them, if it’s proving (and I think it is) less practical for independents to find a home in these settings?
All in merely the musing stage, of course. (“Muse-atorial” would be a nice term to have. “Join us for a Muse-atorial Friday…”) It’s just good to think about, I believe, because too frequently I meet authors either embracing the industry with their eyes shut or dissing it without a backward look, and I think both moves are impetuous. Trade shows might be a spot to learn something helpful.
NOW about the IMPORTANT point in your comment. This Coffee and Tea Festival!! I am so there. You get the details, I’m going to meet up with you and we’re going. How fantastic. Sounds fabulously caffeine-centric and I am down for that. So glad you told me. (The wonders of Brooklyn, how do you guys do it?) I’m off to Google it right now.
Thanks again for the cuppa (love from Mr. Schwartz at Starbucks) and yes, our drinks AFTER BEA were the best part of the trade show. Maybe next year we skip BEA, do the Coffee and Tea Fest, and retire to drinks. LOL
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi, Porter:
I’m going to tag along with Don and Jim, and add something Jessica Strawser of Writer’s Digest said in a recent communication. She noted that it’s often the smaller, more intimate conferences and festivals where genuine, meaningful, and productive face-to-face introductions and connections get made. I tend to agree. BEA is an experience. But I think it’s far more valuable if you’re already a player than if you’re seeking to become one.
I don’t disagree, David.
I think I perhaps haven’t made myself as clear as I should have. I’m saying that I think the trade shows have tried valiantly to provide a place for the non-aligned authors, in particular, meaning those who aren’t sent there by their publishers to do autographs. But I think that emphasis may have been misguided in that — as you and Jessica are saying — conference settings (though they are happening at BEA and at FBM) are generally the better settings for such things.
For traditional authors who ARE going to a trade show, however, I do think there’s an opportunity for the shows to do a bit more — for example, social media training, the things their publishers are trying to help leverage. And that might be the way to go instead of trying to be all things to all authors.
Does that clarify? Or just confuse further? :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, shouldn’t that be “Buy Me a Carafe of Campari” to head off any post-trade-show composition blues?
Tom, you are as ever fully right.
And, in fact, Therese tried valiantly to have the appeal turned into a glass with Campari rather than a cup of coffee, when she was gracious enough to put this pitch on. (She’s concerned about our regular contributors not being paid, and graciously wanted to give his a try.) Coffee being my next greatest c-word after Campari, I’m delighted with the coffee until we can learn to hack this little charmer and get it turned into the good stuff.
Meanwhile, three cheers for Therese! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Oh my gosh! I would love to take you up on a tour at BEA in Chicago next year. I’ve always read your posts about the shows and wanted to just experience being at one of them. Plus, I’d finally get to meet you, too!
With my move to Eastern Nebraska (this weekend, even!), I’ll be within an eight hour drive of Chicago, and I’ll save some money, so keep me in mind if you really do have a WU tour!
As for your questions, I really don’t know the answer. I think I’ve given up trying to understand publishing…well, and even people. As far as why someone might not want to go to a tradeshow, I suppose maybe it’s hard to figure out where a person might fit into scheme of it all. For me, I’ve only wanted to go to because of curiosity. I don’t think going as an author would make any sense, because it’s not like anyone would be interested in talking to me in that capacity, but I’d love to see how it all goes together. :)
Hey, Lara,
It would be a pleasure to have you along on a BEA walk-through in Chicago, of course, and I certainly hope we can do it.
Your reaction is exactly the kind of thing I wish we might see from more writers. As far as I’m concerned, curiosity is a glorious reason to want to see one of the world’s great publishing trade shows on its feet — a lack of that curiosity on the part of anyone working in books today worries me.
I’ve referred to this — I hope not too unkindly — as the vegetable stand part of some self-publishing culture. It’s only a part, mind you. It’s self-publishing as a sort of parallel business that creates the same veggies (books, in our case) but seems determined to ignore the vast rolling fields and farms all around it. I can’t see it as healthy when writers sometimes work so very hard to reject everything they can about the structured business of publishing. It is that structured business, after all, that got most of us involved in the first place. The industry that gave us Didion and Shaw, like the mammoth commercial crop-centers that feed whole nations, are dissed awfully easily by these vegetable stand folks whose own efforts at growing eggplants aren’t really all that more remarkable than what the major farms are producing in their millions.
So, yes, would love to have you, and I’d just ask you to try to table such thoughts as “it’s not like anyone would be interested in talking to me in that capacity.” All authors come from somewhere, and no publishing person doesn’t need authors. There are enough rejections in life without making up some in your mind. :)
Thanks for reading and commenting, and I hope we can work something out next May.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
A longtime lurking and appreciative reader of WU pops him his head to comment. The 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair’s guest of honor is Indonesia, a country where I was born and raised as the son of American missionaries to Bali and where I still live. Most of my fiction, published and trunk, derives from my upbringing. As a young boy, I was a witness to one of the world’s worst and yet least known mass killings, when in 1965 an estimated one million “Communists” were slaughtered by the military and right wing paramilitaries. In Bali alone, some 50000 were killed, some right out there in front of my home. I wrote a novel about that terrible time (Bones of the Dark Moon). I skipped right past my agent of the time and went straight to a boutique publishing house in Bali, as the natural market for the story is here in this country.
It also has wider appeal as my Amazon reviews indicate, yet not to the Frankfurt Book Fair (novels must be originally written in Bahasa Indonesia, whereas mine was in English). Still, you’d think there’d be some unofficial interest, especially considering that this novel is one of the very few available in English about that atrocity (it takes up where The Year of Living Dangerously ends). My local publisher and I have tried everything to get noticed by the Frankfurt Book Fair yet obscurity remains my fate. Too many voices, and mine is not loud enough; too many unfamiliar atrocities, and the 1965 killings remain a minor historical blip.
As for coffee, I’d buy you a cup of genuine Indonesian luwak coffee, sourced direct from free and wild civet cats, who, you know, fussily dine on only the sweetest of the tree’s coffee beans, age them for awhile in their digestive tracts, and then poop them for the roasting.
Hi, Richard,
Many thanks for popping your head up to say hello and for reading us so faithfully at Writer Unboxed.
I think many of us are excited about Indonesia being this year’s country of honour and look forward to seeing what’s in Frankfurt.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had trouble getting your book involved, but I wish you all the best in your work. And should we have a chance to have that coffee someday, I’ll just ask you not to remind me about the cats. :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Well, first of all, Porter, you left off the most important part of BEA: the patience required to stand in line at the only Starbucks in the Javits Center. ;) My husband claims there are two Starbucks at McCormick Place, but I haven’t verified that.
I agree with a lot of what Jane Steen said. I have attended local writers conferences, national writers conferences, trade shows (BEA) – and I, too, missed going to LBF this year. I’ve found local groups to be far too insular, as well as resistant to discussing the business side of the business.
Thanks for the lovely shout-out to me above. As always, I had a specific plan for this year’s BEA. I had a list of people/companies to talk to. Got to all but one (they exhibited last year but not this year). The face-to-face may seem antiquated, but is important. Meeting someone – and meeting them in a high-pressure environment like BEA – gives you a pretty damn good idea of what kind of person they are. I’ve decided both for and against doing business with people based on meetings at BEA. So far my track record has been good.
The admittance fee, though, is ridiculous. But it shows that BEA is not focused on authors, only on their books. If they wanted authors there as badly as they want readers for Book Con, the price would be much lower. End of rant.
I’m glad to buddy or tour or both next year, since BEA will be in my hood. I’ll take you to my favorite coffee house, Metropolis, near Loyola University. I believe I promised Carolina bbq, too, so we’ll head over to Lillie’s Q. Campari/Grey Goose to follow.
Viki
Of course, I only left out the Starbucks line at the Javits, Viki, because I assumed you were still there, three weeks later, waiting for the damned coffee, lol. I’m praying that your husband has it right about McCormick having two Starbucks, there’s not enough caffeine in the world to get the BEA crowd through that week comfortably.
Yes, I think that you and Jane Steen are on the same (and right) wave-length in terms of what advanced self-publishers with clear niches and stabilized careers are facing. The author-services industry is focused (sometimes disturbingly) on the folks who are such newbies that they’re easy pickings. They’re also needier on a wider scale and they’re easier to woo into various promised “solutions,” as we know. Do NOT say that author services are cropping up like toadstools around here or you’ll be boxing with the Unboxed for weeks, as I discovered last time around, lol. But the point for us now is that while entry-level “author service” propositions have proliferated at an almost absurdist pace, those who create and purvey those things seem to sense a tougher customer when they get around the more seasoned independent authors, so we see less of those offers in place for people of your and Steen’s ilk — including conference events.
I think you have the right tack with your experienced operations at the trade shows and at some point — perhaps if we can do this walk-through next year in Chicago, you could speak to the group about the kinds of meetings you have in these settings and how you go about arranging and conducting them. I think that inexperienced authors imagine a trade show as a place to just “go and look around,” and may benefit a lot from an understanding that it’s actually all about the meetings for all of us.
Thanks again, and I’m fully down for the Metropolis, the barbecue, AND the Campari! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Book Expos are still necessary because of…the books!!!
The citation in the box from the BBC bodes well for traditional book publishing. As of 2012, in the UK, anyway.
But I say books are here to stay. I’m still yet to e-read a book. Won’t do it. I spend enough time looking at a bright screen writing my own stuff.
I’ll go to an Expo as soon as I can. Local conventions are almost as good–and you can pitch to agents there!
P.S.–I’ve pitched to Janet Reid. Very, very nice and helpful lady.
Great article, Porter! Wise words.
I’ve always wondering how people manage to write such a long article not losing the main thought.