Book Expo America had its first-ever press conference today. It was very press conference-y. The main speaker was Lance Fensterman, who is the Vice President of Books, Publishing and Pop Culture for Reed Exhibitions (the company that organizes BEA). It is at once weird and admirable that, up until now, BEA has never really courted the press, but at this conference, Fensterman made a mad run for the media.

"You as members of the media, besides our bookselling friends, are probably the most important contingent" of the show, Fensterman said. This was because "BEA at its core is really about content and connectivity," and about "Content in all its form and content creators." Somewhere else in the great hall, I'm sure a bookseller died of a heart attack as soon as Fensterman said those words. Fensterman also said that BEA was about "opening a dialogue" and I literally yawned when he said that.

He also acknowledged the problems in the publishing industry: "It's been an interesting year," Fensterman said. "The numbers are positive. I feel good where we're at." (This had to be an outright lie, but that's what press conferences are for, amIrite?) Here are some numbers that he quoted:

Attendance is down 14% from 2007's BEA in New York, but attendance is up 30% from last year's show in Los Angeles. This isn't so surprising, since I could throw a rock pretty much anywhere in Manhattan and take out the eye of someone who works in the publishing industry (and it might just come to that.) If you have a show in publishing's back yard, of course more people are going to come out. But the media attendance at the show is up 20% from 2007. "We like you," Fensterman said to the room full of journalists. The show's square footage is down about 21%. Fensterman repeated some previously reported news: New York City will be BEA's home for the next four years (next year's show was supposed to be in Las Vegas before the industry tanked, which is a shame: A Vegas show would have exploded my head with glee), and the show is going to a weekday schedule as opposed to a weekend one. Fensterman said it would be "A more focused event." I think this means fewer parties.

Fensterman talked about content a lot. Apparently, Steven Tyler ("of Aerosmith") and Chuck Klosterman will be appearing at BEA, and this is apparently exciting: "For the first time, we've put content on the show floor." Also, Borders.com has set up a studio to interview 70 authors over the next three days.

Then this guy named Tom Allen who is the Chief Executive Officer of something called the Association of American Publishers got up to talk. I really zoned the fuck out. All I heard was that the "book publishing industry faces an array of significant and diverse challenges." And then "blah blah blah...frankly, the lifeblood of this democracy." The end.

Then Oren Teicher, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Booksellers Association, noted that though "we are an industry undergoing dramatic change," he was "delighted" to see that BEA bookseller attendance was the same this year as last year. And then the press conference ended after all the reporters fell asleep. After the presser, I asked Fensterman about those bookseller attendance numbers: BEA and the ABA literally had to give away attendance for free to get those bookseller numbers back up to where they were last year. "We should've said that in the press conference, you're absolutely right," he said, but he noted that "It was just $75, and the real cost is in the air travel and the hotels, and so we were just giving them a little break." And then Fensterman said he was a big fan of Dan Savage, and downloaded the podcast every week. Yay, Dan!