How can you tell it’s a book fair if there’s no complaining? By that definition, last weekend’s BEA was certainly a book fair. The Expo had not even officially started when the drum beat began: it’s too hot, there are too many, too similar panels, the Javits Center is far from perfect, and the Brooklyn hotel—which was chosen because it’s less expensive than Manhattan for out-of-town booksellers—is too far away. Add to that, of course, the complaints from the New York—based executives that having the fair in the New York area, while certainly less costly thanks to no airfares, is complicated because they (we?) have to run back and forth from office to fair, while still keeping up whatever obligations we’ve got at home. My own personal disappointments are that Nobel Prize—winning Public Affairs author Muhammad Yunus begged off a political panel, and that charming, megaselling HarperOne author Paulo Coelho did not appear at the Sunday author breakfast.
But even the heartiest naysayer would have to have been moved by the scene at the Marriott Hotel in Brooklyn on Thursday night. In case you haven’t heard, there’s been little gains in book sales lately, and our era is not exactly a heyday for the independent stores. Still, the ballroom was packed—though it was in Brooklyn, and there were at least three parties about to start at any minute across the river—and the mood was upbeat. This was a Celebration of Bookselling, after all, and it wasn’t just BookSense winners—among them The Book Thief’s Markus Zusak, Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen and the ubiquitous, and always amusing, Nora Ephron—who were celebrating: the idea was that despite all the downturns, and the store closings, and the fact that there are now fewer than one-third the number of independent stores there were a decade ago, bookselling is still a viable and enviable profession for some. As PW Bookseller of the Year Award winner Gayle Shanks (of Tempe’s Changing Hands) put it in her long and very emotional acceptance speech, those who have survived—her friends in this very room—are the “scrappiest” and smartest of all.
It was a bittersweet event, of course, as even the most committed Pollyanna couldn’t ignore the decrease among the ranks. But there, still, was Carla Cohen of Politics & Prose, Roberta Rubin of The Book Stall, City Lights’ Paul Yamazaki, Miami’s Mitch Kaplan and new board member and former Bookseller of the Year Steve Bercu. People, in other words, who had devoted their lives to the culture and commerce of books. Gayle Shanks even invoked the famous aphorism about bookselling: those who want to make a small fortune should start with a large one—but then debunked it. It’s all in how you define “fortune,” her speech seemed to say; hers she deemed a very fortunate life.
And so it has been for all of us who have spent countless early summer weekends at the fair that has changed its name but never its attitude. Unlike Frankfurt, London or the relatively new fairs in Guadalajara, Beijing and Abu Dhabi, the BEA remains wholly, unequivocally our own. Pardon me for invoking George M. Cohan, but there is something very Yankee and dandy about being part of such a clear and vibrant example of a you-can’t-kill-it, can-do American spirit. It is something of which we should all be proud.
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