that's a wrap

as Jim posted yesterday, BEA finished up this past week-end with a return to NYC.  Sara Nelson, former editor of Publishers Weekly, blogged about hot titles.  one of the most talked about, as mentioned in EarlyWord, is David Small’s “Stitches.”  the memoir is a quick, but heartbreaking read of the author’s unhappy childhood with a workaholic, radiologist father who unknowingly gave his son cancer and a depressed mother whose moods were a destructive tidal wave.  the illustrations are phenomenal, expertly capturing the bleakness.  because Lorraine attended BEA last year, she’s on the mailing list for some of the publishers and received an ARC of “Stitches” – the first Sno-Isle Libraries employee to drop a comment on this post will receive this slightly thumbed-through copy.

the big heavy, PW, offered a vinal verdict on the show: “productive.”  attendance was up 30% from last year’s conference in Los Angeles, but down 11% from the 2007 nyc show.  of course, much of the talk was on e-books and readers.  also, much buzz was devoted to this fall’s line-up of titles.  for coverage from major newspapers on this year’s BEA, PW has a thorough round-up.

as always, Dear Author, offers links to those voicing a different take on the show.  Kassia Krozser over at Booksquare didn’t see much innovation at this year’s BEA, despite the fact that “Big Idea” was the theme.  Krozser tackled Alexie’s elitist quip on e-books, fully referenced by Lorraine’s post earlier today, and the inclination of publishers to make declarations without providing facts, all the while not listening to input from their customers (such as the $9.99 price of Kindle e-books is not sustainable*).  Richard Nash takes further digs at publishers in his blogging for PW:

The publishing business is not in trouble because there’s no demand for books. It is in trouble because there are changes afoot in how best to satisfy the demand, changes to which there are suitable responses, two of which are fostering fan culture, and generating a sense of occasion, and the leaders of the largest publishing organizations are failing in their professional responsibility to implement these responses.

much food for thought.

*for an examination of e-book pricing, see PW’s “The E-book Pricing Conundrum“

posting by marin

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