Publishers Weekly reports there is little appetite in the US publishing community for a large-scale annual trade show along the lines of BookExpo, which folded in 2020 after many years at the Javits Center in New York City.
“The overwhelming response from the big houses was that they have no desire to go back to the Javits Center, with its big booths and the costs in time and resources that entails,” says Andrew Albanese, PW senior writer. “Smaller publishers as well as indies and authors are more interested in returning to such a show, but they can’t afford it either.”
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Without an annual trade show, however, the publishing industry risks undermining any sense of professional community, according to Albanese.
“Trade shows serve a purpose—they bring people together and highlight the work of an industry,” he tells me. “For a week a year, we get headlines, and we see our peers face to face. That sense of community matters, especially when an industry is facing challenges the way publishing is.”