Keith J. Kelly
MEDIA INK
Book publishing may be an industry under siege, but you could not tell that from the Javits Convention Center, where the annual Book Expo America extravaganza got underway in earnest yesterday.
“I’ve been coming to this thing for 25 years, and this is the most crowded first day I can remember,” said David Rosenthal, head of Penguin’s Blue Rider Press imprint, which recently published Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey’s memoir “Wherever I Wind Up” and plans to publish Neil Young’s memoir “Waging Heavy Peace” in October.
Rosenthal said he felt crowds were attracted by brand-name authors who showed up. Young was going to be on a panel this morning with punk rocker Patti Smith.
The Expo is not open to the public, but publishers use it to drum up interest in their upcoming fall and winter books.
“Our booth has been completely packed since we opened,” said Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little, Brown and Co. at Hachette Books Group, which last year won the auction to publish the first-ever adult novel from “Harry Potter” author J. K. Rowling.
The book, “The Casual Vacancy,” is set in rural England and centers around the secrets that begin to emerge when a local councilman dies and creates a vacancy on the council.
Pietsch said he has cranked up the first printing for the book to 2 million copies. While the book will contain no magic or wizardry, it will borrow one page from the Potter marketing strategy, with a one-day national on-sale date, Sept. 27, amid a huge publicity blitz.
One of the longest lines at the Expo was to meet Daniel Handler, author of “Who Could That Be at This Hour,” the first installment of the latest Lemony Snickett series, “All the Wrong Questions.” The book is due out on Oct. 23.
There were a few more parties than there were during some of the worst years of the recession. Penguin staged its at the famed Algonquin Hotel, and Knopf/Doubleday was going to Cognac on Broadway yesterday. Harper Collins was heading downtown to The Park on lower Tenth Avenue.
People Managing Editor Larry Hackett and the weekly’s Books Editor Kim Hubbard are staging a bash at the Top of the Standard on Washington Street tonight, helping to fill a void when The New Yorker opted out of its book party in favor of spending its dollars at the White House Correspondents Dinner in May.
A lot of the activity was off the floor, although one rights editor complained that a lot of the British publishers seemed to be staying home this year. He theorized that they didn’t want to miss the festivities for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.
Random House, the nation’s biggest publisher, wasn’t spending much more money at the Expo than it did in the past. It has maintained only a modest presence for the past several years.
Simon & Schuster also seemed to have a smaller booth this year.
“Publishers realize they need the show,” said Jim Milliot, the editorial director of Publishers Weekly, “but they want to spend as little as possible on booths.”
Nielsen Bookscan said that unit sales in the retail outlets that it tracked were down about 8.9 percent in 2011 compared with a year earlier. Print adult fiction, normally the most robust, tumbled 17.7 percent last year, to 160 million units sold.
“The book industry needs to put forward a strong message that gets everyone to engage with content and not simply get the consumers it already has to make a transition to digital,” said Michael Norris, a senior analyst at Simba Information Inc.
Simba’s study, the State of the Consumer Book Publishing 2012, estimates that about 54 percent have read at least one paperback title in 2011, down from 63 percent in 2010.
“Over 100 million Americans didn’t buy a print book or an e-book last year, and if this business wants to grow, that’ s where it needs to start looking,” Norris said.
War story
The quest to find the next hot book from a debut author was a big part of the show. Pietsch at Little, Brown was pushing a novel by Iraq war veteran Kevin Powers, “The Yellow Birds.” He is planning a 50,000 first printing for the author who went to college after returning from the war.
Miracle
If booksellers’ reaction to a Monday afternoon “buzz panel” is any barometer, then the memoir by New York Post reporter Susannah Cahalan will be a hit. Her galleys were snapped up in minutes.
“Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness” chronicles how an autoimmune disease attacked her brain, causing convulsions and leading doctors to predict she’d need to be institutionalized for the rest of her life. One doctor figured out what was wrong.
kkelly@nypost.com
Michael Pietsch, Neil Young, Keith J. KellyMEDIA, David Rosenthal, Hachette Books Group, Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey, Javits Convention, Daniel Handler
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