The final chapter? Organizer ‘retires’ annual BookExpo
NEW YORK — The annual publishing convention and trade show known as BookExpo, a decades-old tradition where guest speakers have ranged from former President Bill Clinton to Margaret Atwood, may be coming to an end.
ReedPop, which has managed BookExpo for a quarter- century, announced Tuesday that effective immediately it was “retiring” the event, along with the fan-based BookCon and merchandise-based UnBound. Any future for the convention depends on the wishes of the book community. As in other industries, publishers have debated the necessity of holding BookExpo when much of the business once conducted there has moved online.
Thousands would gather each year at BookExpo, which used to be rotated around the country. But over the past decade, after the financial crisis of 20082009, it was held almost exclusively in New York City as Manhattan-based publishers looked to cut costs. Even in New York, they sharply reduced how much space they purchased on the convention floor and scaled back on lunches and dinners and other promotional events.
Earlier this year, BookExpo was held virtually because of the coronavirus.
“The pandemic arrived at a time in the life cycle of BookExpo and BookCon where we were already examining the restructure of our events to best meet our community’s need,” Reed event director Jennifer Martin said in a statement.
“This has led us to make the difficult decision to retire the events in their current formats, as we take the necessary time to evaluate the best way to move forward and rebuild our events that will better serve the industry and reach more people than we were able to before.”
Fiona McRae, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press, said she valued the contacts made at BookExpo and felt sorry for younger people in publishing who might not have the same chance. Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle, who has praised BookExpo as a chance for the industry to gather under one roof, said in a statement that he hoped such occasions would happen again.
Booksellers have been meeting annually since the early 20th century, although the modern convention dates back to 1947 and the founding of the American Booksellers Association Convention and Trade Show. The ABA, the trade group for independent owners, served as host until the mid-1990s, when tensions with superstore chain Barnes & Noble and some publishers led to legal action and to the association’s selling the show to Reed.
BookExpo was once a prime venue for upcoming books to “break out,” and for publishers to place orders with booksellers and bring in top authors to meet with store officials, agents, librarians and journalists.
At a given convention, a dais might be shared by Atwood, William Styron and Margaret Thatcher, or by Bill Murray and Julia Child. But over the past few years, visiting authors lacked the star power of previous guests, and attendance fell sharply.