BookExpo – Who Is It?
I feel like I've been in psycho therapy with BEA these last few months; Lots of reflection, introspection, honest self inventorying and some group therapy as well (I used to call that lunch with customers). The process has been healthy though and needed. We've made some significant changes that most of you are well aware of this point, but we've also confirmed some of the basic personality traits of the event. The changes we've made structurally (location, dates, participants, etc) will allow those personality traits to be highlighted and for the identity and value of an event like BEA to shine through more clearly. Here begins a series of two or three posts on just who BEA is after my off season of being "In Therapy" with it..... I'll break this into 2 additional posts beginning on Monday. And to be clear, these posts are not a manifesto on how it "should be done" but rather my attempt to articulate our response the ongoing challenge of keeping BEA relevant, vibrant and useful to all of those who use it. -L
When boiled down to it’s core, BookExpo is a marketing and networking event more than it is anything else. The question is, how do you measure the success of a marketing and networking event, particularity for publishers? Is it quantifiable? Is it how many books or catalogs you gave away or how many business cards you collected?
Ultimately I believe the event’s success is measured by the demand and buzz publishers create for their book(s) and how meaningfully they impact the people that impact book sales in our market. Did the publisher put themselves in a position to create more buzz for it's books by participating in BEA than if they’d stayed home watched 30 Rock and ate potato chips?
If that is indeed the ultimate test of BEA’s value to publishers – “making” books – then how will the show continue to hone it's offerings and identity to foster that? I offer a few broad themes that BEA needs to continue to evolve to, embrace and execute:
3 comments:
Well... we see lots of media buzz about Toy Fair. (Fan press, local and national media, blogs) BEA has a similarity with Toy Fair in that it is trade-only, appeals to the masses, and has lots of cool stuff.
PW (BEA's cousin) publishes a daily newspaper. Could they also publish a daily blog, invite anyone and everyone to submit articles about interesting stuff they are hawking, or saw, or experienced? Kinda like The Beat... This fulfills your "stage" goal (I went to this great publisher's party!), your "outside the box" goal (although it's a window with comment boxes), and "create new media" using the New Media. And if the blog/site is popular, the influencers will come if it has value.
And Lance... if you hear Beethoven on the way to therapy, run away!
Torsten is on to something. I couldn't find a twitter handle for BEA. At previous conferences I've attended, tweeting was very informative. There are tons of publishers and marketing(like myself) on Twitter and Facebook, and they are powerful tools. Especially this year when travel budgets are getting slashed, promotion early and often is the key.
The anonymous comment reminds me... I subscribe to that networking thing online, where you can introduce yourself, etc. The only emails I get are from small micropresses which I usually ignore. No graphic novel buzz. Nothing from the big boys about ANYTHING. BEA is a high school cafeteria, and that site is the table where all the weird kids sit and are ignored.
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