A BEA Diary – 2004 – Part 5
Saturday
If Friday of BEA is “spring training” than Saturday is mid-season after a seven game losing streak… at least in the small press area.
A lot of publishers come expecting to sell a lot of books and they are blown away by the fact that there are so few book buyers at the show. Why should buyers come? You can see everything you want on the web… for a hell of a lot less money. And besides, how many bookstores are left? The ABA says it’s down to something like 1900 from 2500 last year (don’t quote me on those numbers…. but I seem to remember hearing them somewhere.)
Saturday is usually well-attended, but I was surprised how few people showed up. Of course the show was smaller this year and for the first time in memory you really could cover it in one (long) day… and I suspect that many attendees did just that.
I was interested in what business books were being shown this year so I went to Planning Shop Books. They had a terrific title called What Business Should I Start and I expect it will be a big seller for them as they did a great job with it.
I then walked over to All Aboard who have a fun title called The 100 Best Things I’ve Sold on eBay. I really liked the concept of this but it was another example of a book with a good idea and a piss-poor cover. Still, I think it has a chance if it is marketed correctly. Why won’t publishers ever understand that covers count… and that hiring a pro-designer is not a ‘cost’ but an ‘investment.’ I’ll never figure it out.
I was getting tired of looking at books so I thought I’d go and talk to some of the distributors. Most of the ones I visited said that they were not looking for new publishers but if the right one approached them and had a marketable item, they would consider it. I had a nice conversation with a woman at Greenleaf They are actively looking for new submissions. I didn’t fully understand their program, but they seemed on the “up and up.”
I walked over to Author House and spoke with Brad Collins. They had a huge booth all done in red and white. The folks were nice, but for some reason which I can’t explain, I kept getting the feeling that they were more of a vanity outfit rather than a publisher or distributor. I asked some questions and I got a lot of vague answers. Maybe I’m wrong about them. Indeed, I hope I am… but there is something about them that just did not pass my “smell test” and I’m not sure what it is. All of their printing is done via Ingram’s Lightening Source…. another outfit I don’t feel all the comfortable with. Anyway, the folks were nice, but there is just something that bothers me about this company.
I then decided to check out my competition. There are two primary competitors to JAYA123, the Cat people and Acumen.
The Cat’s Pajamas has been around for a long, long time. Their system costs between $6,000 – $10,000 per user. While we’ve taken a few customers from them over the years, by and large we market to different customer bases. How many ten-book publishers can afford the Cat system?
Their system is rather antiquated as they have never modernized to using relational databases (like Oracle or SQL-Server etc.) They are still back in the 1980s with their system… but it works (I guess) and they have a small, but happy customer base.
To be honest, they are not the most hospitable group of people and I felt a very cold blast of air from the owner of the company, so I decided to leave. It would not have killed him to be a bit more civil. I’m the competition… not the enemy… and I can do more to help him than he can ever do to help me. My clients will outgrow me and move on to something bigger. The reverse does not often happen. When his clients get into trouble, they go “paws up” Chapter 11… end of story. You should always be nice to your competition…. you never know when you might want one of them to buy you out!
Next, I went over to the Acumen booth. It’s been many years since they were at BEA and a lot of folks thought they had gone out of business. It was never true. They just didn’t need any MORE business. They have an expensive system as well, starting at about $10,000 a user. They used to send me customers but I had not heard from them in years. I wanted to speak to Larry Wolf but he was not around. The woman I did speak with was very nice, but had never heard of JAYA123 (or PUB123 either.) Maybe we can renew our relationship with the Acumen folks. We get a lot of inquiries from companies that are way too large for JAYA and I’m sure they get inquiries from small outfits as well. Making contacts like this is what BEA is best at. I made a note to follow up with them.
Did you ever hear of abebooks.com? I was not all the familiar with them so I went over and chatted with their rep. This is a really interesting outfit. They seem to have their act together and if I were Amazon, I’d keep these guys in my rear-view mirror.
Sticking with technology I decided to check out the e-book section. Years ago this was a HUGE sector of the floor, but these days there are just a few small booths even further away than the small press was from the epicenter of the hall. Adobe was there as was ereader.com. However I thought the most interesting space was a sparse booth belonging to Open eBook Forum. These folks have a wealth of info on this sector of the industry and if eBooks are your thing, you might want to check them out. eBooks are not getting a lot of press… but I learned that a lot of them are being sold… like over a 400,000 of them in the first quarter of this year alone. I think we all have to take a second look at this sector.
After another lunch with Mayapriya (in which I paid… so what else is new?) I spoke to the Anthology software folks. These folks make point-of-sale software for retail book stores… so you can imagine how down their business has been of late. However, like all good software companies, they make most of their money from yearly maintenance contracts and there are still enough retail outlets to keep these folks in clover for a while. They have a great system… and I told them that they should port it over for “regular” retail stores. They said there is talk of doing this. If I had a bookstore, this is the system I would run.
A company called Identry.com had a booth so I stopped by to find out what they do. I’m still not sure. It seems that they have some kind of system that matches inventory with a customer list and sends out email announcements. Sounds like spam to me, but as I said, they were pretty vague at the booth… and their website is just as vague. It seems to me that if you can’t sell your OWN services clearly and concisely, how are you going to sell others?
For a show that is targeted to the writing industry you’d think there would be more in the way of author services, agents, etc. But there never is… even though a lot of authors visit the BEA. I found one writing service that was interesting: Upwrite Press. I was impressed with some of the software and services of this company and still don’t understand why there are not more exhibitors who are similar.
As the day was winding down and the already small crowd thinned out, I went back to the small press to talk to some of the folks there asking about their day. Like I said earlier, it was like mid-season during a losing streak. I see it every year. The folks who are so energized on Friday, are depressed as hell on Saturday… and they were all hoping for a miracle on Sunday. I hated to tell them that in the book biz miracles seldom happen… and never to the small press. The only way we succeed is by hard work and those who do succeed understand that the only place where “success” comes before “work” is in the dictionary. Anyway, the day was over and it was time to party… and no one parties better than the Midpoint Trade people
The Midpoint folks have a pizza party each year where they invite their publishers and others they do business with and like last year they invited me and Mayapriya Long. And it is where I found (with her consent) this year’s OFFICIAL BOOK BABE.
Erin Evans: Official 2004 Book Babe
This pix does not do her justice. She is the “total babe package” and when I get a better shot of her I’ll put it here. This is her bio, written in her own words:
Grew up in the bustling metropolis of Wichita, Kansas (aka the armpit of America). Went to school at the University of Kansas where I majored in Sports Information. Headed out to Colorado Springs where I had an internship at the US Olympic Complex, then got married to my wonderful husband Joshua and moved to Boulder, Colorado (and yes, I do shave my armpits – if you know anything about Boulder you’ll understand my clarification) where I worked at a mortgage company and Josh finished up his masters degree at CU. Then we decided to move to Overland Park, Kansas, where I now work for the best book distribution company around, Midpoint Trade Books. After hearing for months about becoming a “book babe” from my boss Julie, I decided I MUST attend BookExpo and find out what this is all about. And here we are.
This is the second year that Midpoint has “supplied” the industry with a Book Babe and everyone involved in the Book Babe contest sends their congrats to both Erin and her company. Of course, the previous Midpoint Book Babe, Julie Hardison, is a mom-to-be, so perhaps a word of caution to Erin is in order? 
At the pizza dinner I sat across from Ed Helvey from Oakhill Press in Virginia. He’s another happy client of Mayapriya Long and he has a very interesting program for new authors. Ed’s press specializes in business and motivational books done by authors seeking to use books to advance their career. While there are some charletons in this segment of the book industry, Ed is a “stand up” guy, and he has a large collection of satisfied authors whom he has been working with since 1988.
I sat next to his assistant Carolyn who was simply charming. I add this picture, taken by Eric Kampmann (owner of Midpoint) because it’s the only picture I have of the party… and if I didn’t put it in I just know someone would say I made the whole thing up!
Carolyn from Oakhill Press and the author
I asked the Midpointians about their new small press program, but they said that things are still being finalized and did not want to discuss it. Besides this was a party, they had all worked damn hard the previous two days, they had another long one tomorrow, and they just wanted to kick back, eat, drink, and relax. I couldn’t blame them.
Maya and I took a cab back to the hotel. Walking through the door we saw Dan Poynter and John Harnish (of Infinity) in the lobby bar. Knowing John was on an expense account, Maya said “Lets have dessert.” OK, no that didn’t happen. But she DID have dessert and John did pay for it and I should have ordered something too… but didn’t.
Anyway, we were discussing the hapless state of the book biz when up walked Brian Jud of Book Marketing Works. With him was his wife. He introduced her first to Maya, then to John, then to me, and finally to Dan. As Dan rose to shake her hand, she said “Oh, of course I know of Dan Poynter.” Dan, without missing a beat, said “You know, you’re a lot younger than the wife Brian brought last year.” It was classic Poynter, played perfectly… an Academy Award performance. The rest of us piled on. I said “You were a blonde last year and a red head the year before.” John asked “Are you the wife with the three children or four?” Maya along with the rest of us was laughing too hard to say anything. I guess you had to be there to see Brian turn every color in the rainbow. We were simply out of control with laughter. Brian’s wife was a good sport about it and made Brian suffer. That five minutes was worth the price of the trip.
It was midnight when I finally got back to my room. I made some calls to the left coast and turned in. One more day of BEA and it would all be over. I love it so. I love this business and I love BEA… and went to bed depressed as hell that it would soon be just a memory.