BookExpo Bids Us a Fond Adieu…

Javits Center. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In surprising/unsurprising news, ReedPop announced Tuesday that they were “retiring” the ailing BookExpo (née Book Expo America, née ABA Convention and Trade Show) as well as the popular and consumer-focused BookCon, which has followed the industry show since 2014. After postponing and then converting to a virtual meeting this year, it appears ReedPop has decided to rethink what the future, if any, of the meeting might be.

This isn’t a great omen, especially on the heels of further consolidation among the big 5 that hasn’t seemed to raise many eyebrows outside of the publishing world. It also bucks the trend of other international events that had seen a slight uptick in attendance before the pandemic consigned us all to endless Zoom calls. Still, some are arguing that this is less about the industry, and that it was time to put this meeting to bed anyway.

Personally, I’ll miss BookExpo, but almost completely as a social event that let me catch up with colleagues and friends that I often didn’t get to see in person; meet authors; and indulge my rampant bibliophilia (and return home as a hero with bags of ARCs for the kids). Professionally, though, it was becoming hard to justify the time and expense. As floor space shrank, independent publisher booths evaporated, and attendance dwindled, more and more of my conversations at the show seemed to focus on how the floor space shrank, how few booths there were, and how much attendance had dwindled. And, of course, how awful the Javits Center was.

That said, this likely isn’t entirely the end. Jennifer Martin of ReedPop has been careful to call this a retirement of the “events in their current format,” and the press release announcing the move affirmed that the goal is to determine “how best to rebuild the events in the future.” This is, of course, standard press release speak. That said, I do hope there is a way forward that addresses what was wrong with the current event (on the industry side, at least; BookCon seemed to be doing great) and how this meeting could become more than an expensive coffee date for attendees. It will also be interesting to see if there is a slight boom for in-person events post-pandemic; I could certainly use the human interaction. Let’s just hope it’s somewhere other than Javits.