Poor Us - Is BEA Porous?

I read in The Times a few weeks back an account by a first-time attendee to Comic-Con in San Diego. She had a line that really intrigued me and crystallized one of the many goals I have for BEA. She said that Comic-Con kept the communication between fans and creators porous. That word struck me and the concept, again as a goal for BEA and perhaps my role in this industry, resonated.

The model for ideas and products currently rising is the outside in model - precisely that porous line between creator and user the Times author described. Fans (consumer, customers, what have you) telling creators (companies, industries, what have you) what they want. The concept of user generated content is based on this. Book deals for bloggers is an example. However BEA is based on the inside out model with creators pushing to purveyors what they feel the public will want. So keeping the lines between consumer/purveyors and the creators porous is an ongoing challenge for BEA. Ultimately our goal is to get more books into peoples hands - that benefits every constituent of the show so how we do that in a world of evolving communication is our challenge.

As for "porous", here is what I'm thinking: you've got the "book" on the one hand, and the "consumer" on the other hand. This was the whole point in the creation of the show, but at that point it was only the bookseller that provided the link (or the "seepage", if you will). Hence, it's a bookseller convention. But meanwhile, what has happened is that everything that is in between these two entities is just as porous and leads to the breadth and scope of business (both quantitative and qualitative) that is not only conducted at BEA, but which also takes the book to the consumer, and makes the show unique.

Obviously, this still includes the bookseller, but it also includes publicity, podcasting, rights, editorial, librarians, bloggers, book reviews, author launches, and the myriad of meetings and chance encounters with people far outside our immediate professional area of expertise that lead to the news and buzz and knowledge of titles that gets them on the bookshelves at bookstores. It's all that stuff that is porous. And this is partially why our podcasting and internet initiatives are so key ... if anything represents the porous world in which we live, it's the internet.

The porous connection and communication between creators and purveyors (thus ultimately consumers) and the maintenance of the porous communication are one of the unique strengths of BEA. Few other international book fairs (of the trade variety anyway) have that porous communication. By in large those fairs are insider affairs with creators doing business with other creators, which is an incredibly important part of the process, but my wish for BEA is that link from creator to the eventual consumer remains porous......

I've been going through a lot of strategic planning with the BEA team as of late and these sort of pie in the sky, off the wall ideas are what come out of that. Fret not, soon I'll be back to cracking jokes and telling tales of bookstore visits.....

-L