A sad piece of book publishing news: According to Publishers Weekly, the U.S. book publishing’s biggest trade show is being “retired.” BookExpo, along with BookCon and Unbound, will not be held next year. This follows the events being canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
ReedPop, which helps run the massive book event, has said that, due to the uncertainty about in-person events at this time, which will likely continue until a vaccine comes into public access, the company has decided “that the best way forward is to retire the current iteration of events as they explore new ways to meet the community’s needs through a fusion of in-person and virtual events.”
In a bit of good news, event director Jenny Martin has said that ReedPop is talking to publishers, booksellers, and other partners to try to figure out how to “rebuild” in the future in order to bring back this huge event in book publishing.
“The pandemic arrived at a time in the life cycle of BookExpo and BookCon where we were already examining the restructure of our events to best meet our community’s needs,” Martin said in a statement. “This has led us to make the difficult decision to retire the events in their current formats, as we take the necessary time to evaluate the best way to move forward and rebuild our events that will better serve the industry and reach more people than we were able to before. We remain committed to serving the book community and look forward to sharing more information in the future.”
I have been privy to BookCon/BookExpo as both a retail person and a guest. As a book lover, it is a fantastic resource plus a way for authors, from big and small presses, to be able to promote their works. There are so many books I wouldn’t have heard of if I hadn’t been going through every aisle of the Javits Center like a scavenger.
PW reports that ReedPop will continue to host the BookCon Facebook group, and that future book-related content will be made available in upcoming virtual Metaverse events. Virtual book signings and book events will be the norm for a while, and despite being deeply sad about this forced retirement, I hope it will give the company room to come back stronger than ever. I’d rather everyone be safe and not risk a super spreader event.
COVID-19 will change the future of cons as we know it, and only time will tell what the full effects of that will be.
(via Publishers Weekly, image: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for AMC)
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