BEA

As noted on Classics Rock!, independent booksellers found a sympathetic ear with singer/songwriter Al Stewart.  The first stanza of his song "Elvis at the Wheel" gives a nod to their plight:

There's an independent bookstore
The last one that remains
All the others you might look for
Have been eaten by the chains
They soldier on 
No one cleans the window panes

Yes, we featured this song once before but it seems appropriate to cite it again on this, the first day of BookExpo America.  I'm out the door right now on my way to the Javitz Center--should be quite a show!
(And thanks to Shelf Awareness for the shoutout!)

Book: The Sequel

Perseus Books pulled off an amazing feat at BEA over the weekend. Last week I posted about their "Book: The Sequel" promotion, in which readers were invited to submit the first line of an imagined sequel to a famous book. The deadline was last Thursday, and over the next 48 hours they edited, designed, and published a collection of the best submissions.

Book: The Sequel is available for pre-order on Amazon and other online retailers, and will be in bookstores June 15th. A preview of the book is available online, and they're still accepting submissions for the web site.

I'm happy to say at least one of my submissions made it to the finished book:

The President was pleased with his new education bill, in which students with good grades would be swept to Heaven in The Rapture, while poor performers would be kept back to repeat a grade and suffer eternal damnation.
--from No Child Left Behind (sequel to Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins)

Incidentally, all proceeds from this book benefit The National Book Foundation.

Practically Live from BEA

Another Publishers Weekly blog post from BookExpo America, which technically went up yesterday evening. . .

Live from BEA

Here's my first post on the Publishers Weekly blog, live from BookExpo America. Stanley Bing makes a return appearance!

Twitterpated at BEA

So I signed up for Twitter today (@BookFlack). I know, in the last post I said "no way," but that was meant ironically. I thought it would be smart to take the Twitter plunge because BookExpo America (BEA) formally kicks off tomorrow (with some preliminary events taking place today). This is the big publishing industry convention and runs through Sunday at the Javits Center in NYC. The place will be crawling with publishing bigwigs, agents, editors, etc. and more than 700 authors, including some pretty big names. It's always a circus and a lot of fun.

In the past I have attended as a representative of a publishing company, which meant I had a booth to use as a base of operations, and colleagues to interact with and borrow money from. This time I'm flying solo, wandering lonely as Wordsworth's cloud. Fortunately, Publishers Weekly invited me to be a guest blogger for them, reporting from the show floor on Friday (as noted on PW's website). It's good to have an actual reason for being there. And I thought I might do some tweeting (the accepted verb form of Twitter) while I'm at it. Or maybe not.

BEA is a trade show in the strictest sense--not open to the general public. (For a funny take on what it's like to attend, read this essay by Robert Gray from Shelf Awareness.) But even if you're not in the industry, Perseus Books has a clever promotion going called Book: The Sequel that you can get in on and contribute to. But you have to hurry--the deadline is 4:00 pm today.