Trying to describe BEA (BookExpo America) to someone outside of the publishing industry can be difficult. Fortunately, there are brilliant people like Michael Cader (of Publishers Lunch) to provide exactly the right commentary and sharp insight. In today's issue of Lunch, he gives this digested version of the BEA experience, using snippets from the past three years of his Lunch report.

2007
I Feel Bad About My BEA: and Other Thoughts on Publishing and Convention[s]
"For four days, I've covered, convened and contemplated, looking for the elusive BEA story that's never there. The simple truth I've come to is that BEA is like holding a mirror up to our business. It can bring you serendipity, get you drunk, put you in the company of amazing people and, as on Friday, leave you covered in sweat. It can exhilarate, exhaust, excite and ultimately exasperate.

"We overwhelm our markets and customers with individual choices -- that's the essential impression of the floor -- and offer precious little guidance and merchandising of ourselves and our lines to help people navigate among those choices. By outward appearances we treat every visitor the same -- booksellers, librarians, wholesalers, media people, and rights buyers are all expected to figure out the booth and the staff personnel on their own, quickly as they glide by. We wait for people to come to us, hoping they will discover the right things when we haven't helped the discovery."

2006
"In 265,000 square feet of abundance, standing out, or becoming memorable, is extremely hard -- particularly if your message is basically the same as everyone else's, and if your both is the same as everyone else's (and the same as your's was last year, only the sky-rise banner or lightbox pictures are new)."

2005
The Not Really Show
"Everyone seems to be more easily able to identify whom the show is "not really... " for than whom it is for. Much as BEA has done to boost the numbers of retailers, it's not really a bookselling show (and a lot of people have bought fall already); it's not really for big publishers, though their square footage seems to keep creeping up; it's not really for small publishers, though many are present, helping to fill the square footage; it's not really a rights selling show and it's not really for international publishers, even as those numbers rise; it's not really for librarians, yet ever more they come in larger numbers; it's not really about 'big books' anymore, but it's not really about small books either; and on the list goes."