BEA 2007 All About 'Expanding Boundaries'

BookExpo America 2007 has designated "Expanding Boundaries" as this year's theme, Lance Fensterman, event director for BEA announced this week. "Much of the book industry is focused on the digitization of books and on building social networking opportunities," Fensterman said, in a statement, and noted: "At BEA, this means that we need to think beyond our four walls, beyond our three days, and certainly well beyond any one single goal or constituent base." BEA runs from May 30 - June 3.

Fensterman pointed to BEA's online presence and its efforts on the international front as examples of how the show is adapting to expanding boundaries:

• This year, as part of an educational program that now boasts over 80 conference sessions, the convention will introduce the BEA Global Market Forum focusing on the expansion of English reading worldwide, which is itself a study in how borders and boundaries have grown and changed shape.
  
  
• To facilitate communication, an online social networking and show planning platform is being launched called My BEA, which will enable users to search events by speaker, attendee, or theme, as well as post their own business interests in order to attract relevant new contacts.
  
  
• BEA's podcast venture at www.bookexpocast.com is being substantially expanded and will provide for pre-show interviews with some of the featured authors participating in BEA's special events, as well as extensive coverage of all the onsite special events and educational programs.

"We are expanding in other ways, too," Fensterman said, and noted: "BEA is a place where you get to meet people in your industry that you would never be able to meet anyplace else. This is something that we need to build on for the future."

Show organizers point to their efforts to attract librarians to the show as an example of this type of growth and diversification. BEA has instituted a "librarian friendly" package, including special conference sessions, a librarian hotel, and librarian receptions, among other programs and promotions to bring librarians together with exhibitors. Over the past five years BEA has grown librarian attendance from 500 (in 2002) to an expected 3,000 this year.

At present, officials note that BEA '07 is on track to have one of its largest audiences ever, with projected increases in most of its constituent bases. BEA is anticipating an increase of close to 20 percent in the number of visitors to BEA this year as compared to when the show was last in NYC in 2005.

The BEA trade show runs from Friday, June 1, to Sunday, June 3, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. This year, for the first time, the American Booksellers Association's full day of education and the Celebration of Bookselling will both be held on Thursday, May 31, at Hotel ABA, the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, in Brooklyn, New York. ABA's programming begins at Hotel ABA on Wednesday afternoon, May 30, with a "Welcome to Brooklyn" kickoff event, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Brooklynite, David McCullough.