A BEA Diary – 2004 – Part 3
Thursday
I feel sorry for people who don’t drink because when they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they are going feel all day!
The best that I could hope for would be a better day than yesterday… where the PMA-U attendees would make the rounds of the vendor booths like they did in the early years that I exhibited. I thought that maybe yesterday was a fluke and that the seminars were unusually good and that kept people from talking to us.
The vendors talked among ourselves and we all were pretty pissed off at the PMA. I mean, we paid a lot of money for the booths and no one was talking to us. And the PMA did nothing to promote us. Not a word about us from the podium. It was pretty obvious to us that we were just a cash cow and that since we had been exhibiting for year after year that the PMA really didn’t have to worry about us. Believe me, we were not happy. But we hoped for a turnaround today.
It was not to be.
During the morning session (when it was a ghost-town in the vendor area) my good friend Paulette Ensign of Tips Products came over for a visit. You just have to downright admire Paulette. She has made a small fortune in teaching others how to make money publishing booklets. She is bold, she is brash, and she takes no prisoners. If I ever had to be marooned on a desert island, she’s one of the the people I’d like to have with me. We had a nice chat about the past year. Paulette never has a bad year. She is in a niche all her own. She’s probably the richest woman in publishing… and if she isn’t, she at least has the best attitude about the biz. I really like Paulette. Everyone does.
I also had a nice chat with Fern Reiss. Fern is talked about as the “new” Dan Poynter of the industry. She’s smart, she is engaging, she is successful, and she has made a real name for herself with her Publishing Game books. I really like Fern. Everyone really likes Fern. Watch out for this woman. If guys like me are the past, then she’s the future.
Fern Reiss and Paulette Ensign (right) at speakers table selling their stuff.
Not much in the way of news with respect to the vendors. One interesting program is being done by Thomson-Shore Printing. They are joining the Green Press Initiative and pledge to have 25% of their total volume using 100% recycled paper by 2006. I don’t know if they are serious about this or if it’s just an advertising gimmick. However, if they can pull it off, they will win all sorts of awards as well as customers from environmentally sensitive publishers. They are a first-class company and I wish them well. Perhaps they can get other printers to join in and save a few trees.
After another morning of not seeing many attendees, it was time for the luncheon and the keynote speaker. PMA usually has good speakers and I was looking forward to one. But the real treat was sharing a table with Mayapriya’s good friend Lissa Warren. Lissa is Senior Director of Publicity at Da Capo Press (an imprint of Perseus) and she has a new book titled The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity. I took a look at this tome and was very impressed. Most such books are B.S., but this one is not…. and it’s written by a recognized industry “pro.” I have no doubt that one day Lissa will start and run the most successful PR firm in New York. It’s just a matter of time.
Over the years the PMA has had some very notable speakers. I think PMA takes great pride in their selections. People still talk about Greg Godak’s speech in New York two years ago, and Ruth Boxcar was a success last year in LA. But this year PMA hit the wall.
The woman who gave this year’s speech is an author of Kent Sturgis’s publishing firm and he is the incoming president of PMA. I’ll let you ponder whatever implications you wish to make about that. But the bottom line and the total consensus of everyone I spoke to is that the woman who spoke this year was the worst speaker the PMA has ever booked. She read a speech that had almost nothing to do with publishing, was poorly written, and basically a waste of everyone’s time. Even her slides were boring. I won’t mention her name because she is not worthy of mention. All I can say is that I didn’t meet one person who liked the address and that’s saying something in a room full of eclectic publishers.
At the end of the speech (which ran long) all of the students rushed to the bathrooms (make your own conclusions) and then off to class. We vendors knew we had been hosed. Just as Officer Obee in Alice’s Restaurant didn’t look at the twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs (with circles and arrows on the back of each one) we vendors knew we were not going to see many prospects at this show. And we were not happy about it.
And as the day ended and we took down our booths, there was a fair amount of grumbling and fair amount of dissatisfaction on how PMA had run this event. I’m sure Jan Nathan will hear a lot about it from a lot of people. And I know for a fact that a lot of the vendors are going to look long and hard about exhibiting next year in New York.
While a bunch of people went off to the Pub-Forum party, I had a dinner meeting with some venture capital folks who were interested in JAYA123. The one thing I learned is that with this group the objective is that they get the gold mine and you get the shaft. While I might have been born at night… it wasn’t last night. I was polite and courteous (kind of a new concept for me !) but I pretty much told them to go &^%$ themselves. I think they hear that often.
By the time I got to bed I was exhausted. PMA-U had been a waste of time for me and most of the vendors. Mayapriya did OK, as she only has to pick up a few new clients to “make the gate.” But when you are selling $14.95 monthly subscriptions, you need to do better than PMA allowed us to do. I’m going to write to all the vendors and see if we can’t prevail on the PMA to make some major changes to the schedule for next year’s PMA. Otherwise, I’m going to ‘fergetaboutit.’