I' m afraid that many publishers consider CIROBE the show they'd rather not think about—a veritable cemetery of miscalculated reprints, poorly marketed midlist fiction and heavily returned former bestsellers. This is a shame, because it's the honesty that a trip to CIROBE demands—honesty on the part of both bookseller and publisher—that makes it one of the most important venues for publishers to attend.
I don't invoke honesty lightly here. The very busy, very full booths at CIROBE offer a unique opportunity to assess the book market as it exists right now, as it appeals, or doesn't, to those Americans who 1) like to be entertained, 2) want to learn how to do something, 3) need to put a meal on the table at least five days a week, and 4) like to read to their children at least 20 minutes a day. That is to say, our industry's ideal consumer. This is a trade largely unaffected by marketing dollars, publicity, front-of-store displays or a book rep's charms. What you'll find at CIROBE are booksellers guided largely by their customers, those elusive, finicky characters who in their steady way actually run this industry. These booksellers are driven by the realities that they face—daily, hourly—in a dismayingly competitive marketplace, one that is, ever increasingly, up against the irresistible allure of DVDs, music downloads, reality shows, dishy magazines and much more. They've made the trip to Chicago to scout for what will sell, quickly and at unusually high margins, to customers who may otherwise leave their stores without spending a dime. We need to watch these booksellers at work. We need to know what they're thinking. Through them, we need to understand their customers.
Bargain books generally hand-sell themselves. They reach customers that traditional publishing—and traditional pricing—can't always reach. There's something elusive and honest at work here, and publishers can't afford not to ponder it: Can trade publishers blithely yield these customers to the bargain market, or does it stand to gain from trying to better understand them? As much as we may not wish to admit it, CIROBE's buyers are assessing these books in the most fundamental way possible, determining their true market value, gauging their chances to sell solely on their content. And finally, happily, determining each book's market value by setting its price point.
CIROBE offers this industry a form of low-cost therapy it should always seek. A chance to self-examine. To refine one's future by studying the evidence of the past. It provides publishers the opportunity to perform a sort of post-mortem not just on one's own list, but on those of all those other publishers, even (or especially) the ones with the biggest, flashiest booths at BEA. In this regard, it remains one of the truest, most candid, most balanced assessments of the current state of book publishing available anywhere. Attendance, every few years or so, should be compulsory for everyone in this industry, because otherwise we suffer—from a distorted perspective, a partial view that limits improvement. Just as we are said to learn from our mistakes, booksellers and publishers must learn from their returns, and from the afterlife of those returns.
I believe that we stand to learn more about ourselves from CIROBE than from the current barrage of newsletters telling us who's signed what (and for how much), who's moved where, and what Dan Brown is up to. If you want to understand what is working—now—and what is most definitely not working, what subjects, titles, formats, page counts, trims and designs only start to look good at 75% off list or, worse yet, wallow even at 10% of list, head to CIROBE. There's nothing like coming upon a book stacked high in a booth, with buyers elbowing their way around it to scout out the classic (and now cheap) European fiction that you just knew was destined to be a remainder from the moment you glimpsed it a couple of seasons ago in someone else's glossy four-color catalogue. And there's nothing like seeing a pile of novels that it seems you were not that long ago reading laudatory reviews of in the New Yorker and the Times. This despite the million-dollar marketing plan and the celebrity endorsements and the promise of a full spate of morning shows.
It's a little sobering, a little heartbreaking and extremely eye-opening.
CIROBE's aisles should be crowded with agents and acquisitions editors and CEOs and CFOs who care to get the truest sense available of what is happening "out in the field." Who are ready to honestly assess the market potential of their next acquisition and want to be privy to the industry's full disclosure before drafting that next contract built around a hefty advance. Who are willing to set aside literary hubris and spend some time in what I've too often heard described as the book industry's underworld. Who crave any opportunity to see what booksellers are looking for, and at what price. Who are prepared to seek out new trends by identifying which old trends are dead, so dead that they look tired even at bargain prices.
It all serves to make you more honest. To make you see clearly, as a publisher and as a bookseller (and we are all, in the end, booksellers).
CIROBE features everything that many other, more heavily attended trade shows do not: tables stacked high and wide with real books and booksellers actively, hungrily perusing their contents; few giveaways; and, especially, salespeople feverishly taking orders. The place looks more like an actual bookstore—albeit a big, noisy one, with harsh fluorescent light and exposed ducts overhead—than any other trade show I've ever attended. And the energy that fills the air reminds me of why I got into this business to begin with: because I deeply cherish these bound things of ink and glue and paper. Because I like their smell and because I think that they should be affordable and widely available, and not denied to anyone. Because it's my fondest hope that they be scattered throughout the homes of this country like so many DVDs and music downloads and gabby magazines. Every single home as crammed with books as that of your average bookseller.
